The Politics of Aesthetic Judgment

The Politics of Aesthetic Judgment Barbara R. Walters University Press of America, Inc. Cover illustration by Ingres, Study for The Triumph of Mediocrity, reproduced with the permission of the Musée Ingres, Montauban, France. For my parents, Eugene and Juanita Walters. BLANK PAGE IV _________________________________________________ Contents List of Figures, Tables, and Graphs Preface ix xiii Acknowledgements Chapter 1 xv The Challenge of Impressionism 1 Introduction The French Academy Origins Reorganized Academy The Neo-Classical Style Origins Neo-Classical Footholds in the 19 th Century Challenges to the Neo-Classical Style Origins From Landscape to Realism 1 3 3 4 7 7 7 9 9 10 vi Romanticism The Public Debate The Salon des Refusés The Reforms of 1863 The Art Critic The Art Public Impressionism The Setting The Impressionist StyleA Common Problem Focus The Impressionist StyleA Configuration of Space Art and Society 11 12 12 13 14 15 16 16 18 19 Chapter 2 The Post-Impressionists Introduction Cézanne Divisionism Symbolism Art and Art Criticism 21 21 22 23 25 27 Chapter 3 Structures of the Modern Movement Introduction Alternate Exhibitions The Impressionist Exhibitions Société des Indépendantes Split of the Salon Salon d’Automne The Dealers 29 29 30 30 31 32 32 32 Chapter 4 The Markets for Impressionist Art Introduction Methodology Data Collection Data Coding Data Analysis Results 37 37 40 40 42 43 44 Chapter 5 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists Cause The Case of Alfred Dreyfus The Escalation of the Affair The Dreyfusists 17 105 105 108 109 vii Chapter 6 The Anti-Dreyfusists An Anti-Dreyfusist Conspiracy? The Dreyfus Affair The Dreyfusard Intellectuals The Jewish Community and the Affair The Elective Affinity between the Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusist Cause 110 116 116 Conclusion 121 Appendix 129 Bibliography 139 Index 145 About the Author 147 117 118 119 viii ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1A. Distribution of Patrons: 1890-1912 48 Figure 1B. Distribution of Transactions: 1890-1912 50 Figure 2. Distribution of Transactions: 1890 52 Figure 3. 1891 54 Figure 4. 1892 56 Figure 5. 1893 58 Figure 6. 1894 60 Figure 7. 1895 62 Figure 8. 1896 64 Figure 9. 1897 66 Figure 10. 1898 68 Figure 11. 1899 70 Figure 12. 1900 72 Figure 13. 1901 74 Figure 14. 1902 76 Figure 15. 1903 78 Figure 16. 1905 80 Figure 17. 1906 82 Figure 18. 1907 84 Figure 19. 1908 86 Figure 20. 1909 88 x Figure 21. 1910 90 Figure 22. 1911 92 Figure 23. 1912 94 Figure 24. Distribution of Transactions, Dealers and Major Patrons: 1841-1899 100 Patrons of Salon Art: 1841-1899 102 Figure 25. LIST OF TABLES Table 1A. Distribution of Patrons: 1890-1912 49 Table 1B. Distribution of Transactions: 1890-1912 51 Table 2. Distribution of Transactions: 1890 53 Table 3. 1891 55 Table 4. 1892 57 Table 5. 1893 59 Table 6. 1894 61 Table 7. 1895 63 Table 8. 1896 65 Table 9. 1897 67 Table 10. 1898 69 Table 11. 1899 71 Table 12. 1900 73 Table 13. 1901 75 Table 14. 1902 77 xi Table 15. 1903 79 Table 16. 1905 81 Table 17. 1906 83 Table 18. 1907 85 Table 19. 1908 87 Table 20. 1909 89 Table 21. 1910 91 Table 22. 1911 93 Table 23. 1912 95 Table 24. Distribution by Purchasers: More Than Fifteen Transactions 101 Patrons of Salon Art: 1841-1899 103 Table 25. LIST OF GRAPHS Graph 1. Transactions by Year: French 96 Graph 2. Transactions by Year: US 97 Graph 3. Transactions by Year: Jewish 98 Graph 4. Transactions by Year: All 99 xii xiii PREFACE This book draws upon the work of my initial doctoral dissertation, completed at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1977. Much of the material remains unchanged from the original work, save minor editorial corrections. The doctoral research work aimed at identifying and explaining the initial patronage of Impressionist art using a sociological framework and methodology. The empirical and statistical sociological approach complements rather than challenges art historical methods. The latter aim at tracing and analyzing the exact provenance of individual artworks or the specific history of individual collections. The former aims at approximating major trends in art patronage in market systems and is based on large data sets and probabilistic models. The first three chapters rely on secondary sources to establish a foundation; these sources include both the most important works by distinguished art historians of Impressionism and the very few publications in the sociology of art that existed in 1977. Especially the first chapter relies extensively on these sources to trace the early history of the Impressionist painters and the basic problem of finding support for their work outside the institution of the official Salon-Jury system. The chapter focuses on describing and explaining the challenge in worldview, or mentalité, posed by the new and modern style of visual representation. In particular, the resemblance of the Impressionist style to ébauches, or sketches -- Academic paintings at an unfinished stage -- caused the paintings to be regarded as symbolic of the declining discipline and moral probity brought about by industrialization and other changes toward modernity. These sentiments were no doubt shared by new upstart classes, perhaps anxious about their status, as well as seasoned art lovers, eager to distance themselves by their aesthetic discernment from parvenu groups. Thus the fleeting and transient subject matter of the everyday world employed as motifs by the painters lacked the nobility to which many pretended, aspired, or had fallen. The painters also challenged the principles of scenographic spatial illusion, with one singular vanishing point, which had held sway in painting since the mastery of perspective during the Renaissance. This perhaps signified in historical context the challenge of newly arrived groups with different ideas about beauty to any absolute standards for aesthetic judgment, hence the title of the book. Chapter 2 briefly extends this discussion to cover the period of the Neo-Impressionists and Symbolists, who were often more directly and self-consciously political in their artistic aims. Chapter 3 again employs standard secondary sources to describe the organizational transformation of the nineteenth- xiv century art world from the anachronistic Salon-Jury system to independent exhibitions and the new system of commercial art dealers and professional critics. The central and original contribution of the book is in Chapter 4. This chapter is based on empirical research that examined financial transactions involving Impressionist art between the years 1890 and 1912. For each year, patrons were identified with a unique identification number and classified by membership into one of seven demographic categories. The number of transactions for each patron was then tabulated by year. Tables and figures were constructed to display the resulting distribution of patrons and transactions by demographic category for each year. The data analysis overwhelmingly corroborated the thesis of an elective affinity between Impressionism and third generation Jews. These were perhaps established connoisseurs in whom a love for art had been instilled as a legacy from earlier generations of collectors who had emulated aristocratic tastes as part of their assimilation. The newer generation of patrons was more secure and emboldened to search for something new. The tables and figures for each year demonstrate an amplification of the affinity between the years of the Dreyfus Affair. The empirical data also reveal the importance of the American market in the success of the style during its early history. The data are then summarized in a set of line graphs. And finally, these trends in Impressionist patronage are compared to trends in the patronage of Salon art for the years between 1844 and 1899, using an identical methodology. Chapters 5 and 6 also rely on secondary sources. These are devoted to a more detailed explanation of the Dreyfus Affair and the concept of elective affinity, as well as conclusions that reflect my thinking about the research and data in 1976. Much has changed since then and the many newer works in the sociology of art have transformed the sub-discipline from a marginal outsider position to the center of a large ASA section in the sociology of culture. Alexander (2003) has recently reviewed the major research and works in the field between 1976 and the present. These newer works and changes in the field have largely complemented and corroborated rather than usurped the basic framework, methodology, and results of the early dissertation. Barbara R. Walters Bay Ridge, Brooklyn 2003 xv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The original dissertation research on which this book is based could not have been executed without the invaluable input of the late Lewis A. Coser, the Chair of my doctoral committee. He suggested the topic in a long after-dinner conversation, which included his active intellectual partner and wife, the late Rose Laub Coser. Together they provided support, critical suggestions, and friendship during the dissertation research and writing period. I am equally indebted to Gerry Suttles, who read and commented on every page of the first draft, and to his wife, Kirsten Gronbjerg, whose friendship at Stony Brook during the doctoral years was invaluable. The late Hanan C. Selvin facilitated a data analysis methodology that captured the most advanced technology of the mid 1970's. In this regard, I would also like to thank his colleague, Stephen Finch, from the Department of Applied Math and Statistics. A special thanks is due to John Gagnon, Department of Sociology, and Herman Lebovics from the Department of History, who also served on the initial dissertation committee. Most of the initial research was executed at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, with support from Hanan Selvin's NIMH Training Grant in Research Methodology and from the Graduate School of the State University of New York. I am also grateful to the university for the fellowship that enabled me to spend a year in Paris at the SUNY Center for Literature and Culture through the Research Program in Paris and to the Fondation des États-Unis at the Cité Universitaire, which provides subsidized housing for international graduate students. The opportunity to work in the library of the Durand-Ruel Gallery was a privilege and an honor, which I have treasured up to the present day. I thank especially Charles Durand-Ruel for permission to use the library and for his kind introductions to the staff. I am especially grateful to Émile Gruet who patiently answered all of my questions and generously supplied reference and archival materials upon request. The gallery was then beautifully situated right off the Champs Élysée, near the Arche de Triomphe, making each day in Paris more special. The transformation of this early work into a book twenty-five years later was a major physical and psychological task, which could not have been accomplished without the support of William Burger, Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Kingsborough Community College. I am grateful to him for the counsel and friendship that facilitated this publication. Thanks also to my many other colleagues and friends at Kingsborough, and to the City University of New York for funds through two PSC-CUNY Research Awards that enabled release xvi time from teaching to finish this and a number of other projects. And, finally, thanks to Madaline and Carol Pizzuto, who edited and typed the final manuscript. Their standards of perfection in manuscript preparation raised the bar. Most importantly, I wish to thank my family, beginning with my parents, Eugene and Juanita Walters, to whom this book is dedicated. They have been my guardians, supporters, benefactors, and best friends from our beginnings as a family in a farming and mining village in Bicknell, Indiana, to the present, with all of our individual and collective successes and failures in between. Their support during the years of the dissertation research was a reason to finish and their advancing years a motivation to publish now. Finally, I thank my husband, Steven Doehrman, who has shared the agony and ecstasy with me at each stage between the decision to publish and the execution of the final copy. Our time together connects all the dots in between, and I am looking forward to having more of it. Barbara R. Walters Bay Ridge, Brooklyn August, 2003 Chapter 1 ________________________________ The Challenge of Impressionism “One great danger for anyone who wants to relate art to society is that ‘society’ is such a vague term” (Burke 1971: 145). Introduction After 1866, a small circle of artists and writers interested in the “modern” movements in French art formed around Edouard Manet at the Café Guérbois in Paris. The groupe des Batignolles, as they were called – Astruc, Zola, Duranty, Duret, Guillemet, Braquemond, Bazille, Fantin, Degas, Renoir, Nadar, Cézanne, Sisley, Monet, and Pissarro – was united, mostly, by shared contempt for official standards in French art (as dictated by the authority of the French Academy and enforced by the Salon juries), and by a shared determination to make a place for themselves in the world of art through authentic, individual expression. The painters of the Batignolles group, Manet excepted, held their first group exhibition at Nadar’s studio in 1874, after which time they became known to the public as the Impressionists. These painters continued to defy official procedures by successive independent shows in 1876, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1886 (Rewald 1946). 2 The Challenge of Impressionism The public reaction to the first Impressionist exhibition was negative. The spectators “flocked to the exhibition in crowds, but with the fixed intention of seeing in these great artists only presumptuous ignoramuses, out to gain attention by their eccentricities” (Durand-Ruel 1939). Most of the participants in this audience viewed those techniques, employed by the Impressionists to create an illusion of spontaneity, as an indicator of lack of effort or skill. The very term “Impressionists,” in fact, was consciously and pejoratively applied in reference to this perceived deficit in artistic probity. The hostile reaction of the public was carried by the critics’ reviews of the exhibition. These reviews typically deplored the participating artists as fanatics who, in the words of the critic Cardon, were obsessed with a “far-fetched theory” which required only “the negation of the most elementary rules of drawing and painting” (Cardon, La Presse 1874). Some went so far as to say that the painters were mad (cf. Dunlop 1972). Cardon, as a case in point, went further than to denounce the integrity of the artists and the style of expression in the paintings on display. His review attacked the very idea of an exhibition set up to circumvent the evaluation of the official Salon jury. In so doing, he claimed, the artists had displayed a disregard for official standards and procedures in evaluating works of art. Such an exhibition, Cardon argued, set a dangerous precedent for French art – it was presumptuous, arrogant, and defiant of instituted authority (Dunlop 1972). The reaction to the Impressionists had its origins in the conservative taste of the French art public, and its tendency to reject that, which was new. This taste was developed and conditioned by the Academy, a remnant from the ancien regime, with a tightly organized structure and a codified set of procedures for making and disseminating aesthetic judgments. The members of the Academy especially endorsed highly finished works depicting scenes in myth and history, and this style of art shaped the public vision of what a painting was to look like. Thus, as is often the case with radical changes in human thought and expression, the intent and techniques that the Impressionists used to capture the subjective moment, the durée, on canvas, were incomprehensible to the public in the social context in which they appeared. The artists began as “outsiders,” antagonistic to the ideals of the official institutions of art, without patrons and without galleries, through which they might have displayed their works. They instituted many innovations in the organization of the French painting world, such as the one-man show and the group exhibition. But they gained access to a changing art public, thus a stylistic victory, only in conjunction with a broader set of changes in the socio-economic structure of France, in The Challenge of Impressionism 3 aesthetic sensibilities and taste on the part of the public, and through the growth of international commerce between private art dealers. It is the goal of this chapter to define and analyze the initial reaction of Impressionist art, and to explain its relationship to the culture of nineteenth century France. This will be accomplished by describing the structure and function of the French Academy, its harmony with the NeoClassical style, and the apparent affinity, which existed between the Academy, its favored style, and the bourgeois public under the regime of Napoleon III. The relative verisimilitude of the Neo-Classical and the Impressionist styles will be compared with respect to the major social trends of the 1870’s: industrialization, urbanization, democratization, and secularization. Later chapters will argue that the reaction to Impressionist art in the 1870’s was, in part, a reaction to a nascent and implicit worldview, which came to public consciousness through conflict during the last decade of the nineteenth century. THE FRENCH ACADEMY Origins The bastion of conservatism in French art was the Academy, which took root and flourished through the initiative of Colbert, adviser to Louis XIV, in the 1660’s. Initially, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture wrested the arts from guild or church control, and brought them under the domain of the crown. Its institution was a critical step in the creation of a French nation-state, and Colbert found in it a powerful vehicle through which the implementation of Mercantilism and Absolutism, the economic and political policies of Louis XIV, was fostered. The arts were profitable, and the academic movement was only part of a larger strategy aimed at breaking the influence of provincial nobility and bringing revenue from Third Estate merchants under crown control (cf. Pevsner 1940). Thus, in its origins, the Academy was progressive; it served three functions in the development of nationhood: (1) it provided a means for standardizing and developing French cultural products, (2) it aided in the centralization of symbolic control, i.e., propaganda, and (3) it linked many budding industries, previously guilds, to the state. For the artist, the institution of the Academy initially signified freedom from guild control (Pevsner 1940), and the transformation of painting from a craft to a respected and lettered profession. Since the Academy provided clearly delineated training procedures, including 4 The Challenge of Impressionism intellectual tasks, and a consensual hierarchy with incremental rewards, the artist, ideally, was able to advance in his career at a regular pace, based on levels of mastery. However, this “freedom” turned out to be illusory, and the artists, in fact, swapped ecclesiastical dominion for “an ingeniously adapted civil-servantdom typical of Louis XIV character” (Pevsner 1940: 101). The real motives for instituting an academy were political and economic, and its function was to train artists in one style, that of Louis XIV and his court. During the eighteenth century, the French Academy expanded through its incorporation of provincial branch schools and grew in its influence. The presence of a fashion in Rococo during the early part of the century suggests an abatement of the assumption that there was one correct style of art, and tolerance for alternate viewpoints. But this was the official tolerance of an institution that had become secure in its influence. The organization of the Academy was disrupted only slightly, even by the French Revolution in 1789, and its members reconvened, after the termination of the Reign of Terror, if under a new name. When the Institut de France, as the new organization was called, opened in October of 1795, six of the eight original members of the Section de Peinture et de Sculpture were former members of the Royal Academy. This institution remained intact throughout the nineteenth century, and was the principal organization for the legitimation of art and an artistic career at the time of the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Reorganized Academy The structure of the Academy in the nineteenth century is best comprehended through the functions of its organizational units: the Institut, the École des Beaux Arts, and the Salon. Personnel for these three sectors were largely drawn from the same pool of working artists, so that even though these sectors represented autonomous units, in theory, control remained centralized in practice. The Institut functioned as an advisory body; the École, as the official institution for training artists --- the Salon was the official exhibition for contemporary paintings. These units were directly linked to the government since decisions within them were subject to the approval of the Minister of the Interior. Complementing these official units were the ateliers, or workshops for students. The atelier masters were typically rooted in the official system, so that these workshops might be viewed most accurately as part of the official world of art. The Institut 1. The Institut was established in 1795 as an “abrégé de monde savant” (Boime 1971: 5) to function in an administrative and advisory capacity in matters in the arts. Organizationally, the Institut was The Challenge of Impressionism 5 divided into three classes, each of which was subdivided into sections, with six members per section. Initially, the Section de Peinture et de Sculpture included representatives from both art and literature, and formed the Third Class. In 1803, the Beaux Arts were reclassified and granted a status independent from literature (cf. Boime 1971; White and White 1965). In practice, the members of the Institut recruited professors for the École des Beaux Arts, typically from their own ranks; they supervised the competitions for students; and, they served as critics for works sent back to Paris by winners of the Prix de Rome competition, the most coveted award in the official world of art. Thus, even though the Institut was established to operate independently from the école, its members concentrated on pedagogy to an even greater extent than prior to the Revolution (Boime 1971). L'École des Beaux Arts. The école, or school for neophyte artists, continued to function in a provisional state through the Revolution, even when the Academy was briefly dissolved. In received official sanction as the École Spéciale des Beaux Arts in 1816 and was brought under the administration of the Fine Arts Section of the Institut. The École des Beaux Arts offered daily exercises exclusively in drawing. The student began by copying other drawings, then graduated to plaster casts and finally, to drawing after a live model. Classes at the école were supervised by twelve professors who rotated on a monthly basis, as in the training provided by the initial Royal Academy. In addition to the classes in drawing, the école offered classes in anatomy and perspective. Students at the école were evaluated by a perennial series of competitions. There were medals that were awarded annually, and those matriculating students who failed to take an award were required to repeat the examinations. The competitions culminated in that for the Prix de Rome, which entitled the recipient to four years of study at the Medici Palace in Rome, as well as a comfortable stipend in Paris upon his return. Ateliers. The formal education of art students at the École des Beaux Arts was supplemented by work in the ateliers. Exercises at the ateliers were also oriented toward preparing the student for the Prix de Rome competition, and their substance reflected this over-arching link between the two phases of art instruction. Additionally, the ateliers offered elementary drawing lessons, which enabled the student to compete in the concours des places at the École, or in the competition for a place as a matriculating student. Success in the concours des places and registration as a matriculating student, were prerequisites for entering the other competitions sponsored by the École. Thus, the initial preparation 6 The Challenge of Impressionism provided by elementary drawing lessons represented a critical responsibility, which was entrusted to the atelier masters. The link between the ateliers and the École was further strengthened by the role of the atelier masters in judging at the major École competitions. It also should be pointed out that the ateliers provided the only instruction in painting. The Salon. The Salon, or official exhibition, was provided for in the initial decree that established the Royal Academy in 1663. These exhibitions were restricted to works by Academy members until 1791, when the Salon was opened to all artists by a decree from the National Assembly. From that time forward, the major problem with each Salon came from the necessity of selecting those works of art that were to be displayed. The solution to this problem came with the institution of a jury, whose duty it was to judge merit. A jury governed earlier Salons in the eighteenth century, but their duties had consisted only of moral censorship. During the nineteenth century, the members of the jury found themselves beset with the near impossible task of limiting the number of works to be displayed at the Salon. This quantity had increased from three or four hundred prior to 1791, to 3,182 between the years 1806 and 1831 (White and White 1965). When the jury was abolished in 1848, the number of painters exhibiting at the Salon rose to 5,180. Thus, the jury returned as the regulating body for the Salon of the following year. Throughout the nineteenth century, the number of jury members vacillated between eight and fifteen, and the mode of selecting its members changed so as to effect the proportion of jury members who were elected by exhibiting artists and those who were government appointees (see Appendix I). But dissatisfaction with the juries and their decisions was only a reflection of the impossibility of selecting paintings from the increasing number of artists who wished to display their work. Structural Weaknesses of the Nineteenth Century Academy. The increasing number of potential exhibitors at the annual, or biennial, Salons serves as an indicator of the broader problem in the organization of the arts in the nineteenth century. The Academy was a system structured to handle the training and career management of approximately 200 artists. By 1863, 2,000 aspiring artists had arrived in Paris to pursue careers in painting (White and White 1965). This glut of artists in the Academic system resulted in strenuous competition among neophytes and bitter struggles between masters over the distribution of awards and medals. Often, due to the overabundance of talent or to hardened disagreements between artists of official standing, the rewards for a given year reflected only the results of informal “trade-offs” between established painters seeking favors for their own protégés. The Challenge of Impressionism 7 Perhaps more important, the expanded participation in artistic expression led to departures from the standard Academic style. Often individuation was the result of the incomplete training offered by the overcrowded École and ateliers. But a growing interest in landscape painting, an authentic focus on the subjective basis of knowledge, and a shift from idealization to observation began to shape competing factions within the art world. This endangered the assumption upon which the monolithic Academic system rested: that there was one “correct” style of painting. The Neo-Classical Style Origins The official style of the French Academy was Neo-Classical, a style rooted in the founding ideals and constituted as standards in the original Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture. These ideals and standards were coordinated with the organization of the Academy since mobility through the Academic ranks was contingent upon the mastery of doctrines and techniques that specified the parameters of expression through painting. The level of detail in these specifications suggests that Colbert and his advisers in their desire to domesticate the art trade made little distinction between Italian originals and the reproductive copies made by Academy “scholars” (Pevsner 1940). The Neo-Classical style proper emerged in the eighteenth century in tandem with the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, which resurrected materials from the early republics for public view (Pevsner 1940). The style reached its crescendo in the work of Jacques-Louis David, the leading painter during the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire. David's Oath of the Horatii was enthusiastically received not only because of its technical virtuosity using a classical theme, but also because it provided a moral vision that illuminated the goals of 1789; it “classicized” contemporary history. David's later painting of Napoleon at St. Bernard enabled him to lay claim to an unrivaled position of influence in the art world since Napoleon, named him Premier Peinture of the Empire. Neo-Classical Footholds in the 19th Century Neo-classical footholds in the nineteenth century were manifest in the authority of academic painter Ingres, official instruction, and an emphasis on techné that privileged "finish" over virtuosity. 8 The Challenge of Impressionism Ingres. Ingres, a pupil of David, carried the Neo-Classical tradition far into the nineteenth century. The work of Ingres was never ideological in the same sense as David’s. Rather than motif, it was Ingres’s extraordinary skill in drawing, which enabled him to advance to an influential position in the Academy. His style, in contrast to David’s, carried a message of purity, detached from social reality (Honor 1972). What the two painters held in common was an emphasis on line over color, mastery of Renaissance painting techniques, and a focus on classical forms. Ingres was the agent of enforcement for the Neo-Classical as the correct style within the Academy during the nineteenth century. His influence in this role was fortified by the “external props of artistic power” (Friedlander 1972, 84), such as his titles as a member of the Institut, Senator and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Ingres used these props to enforce a doctrinaire conservatism regarding style and to oppose, with every means at his disposal, the rise of the new romantic school. He was, in his own words, the conservateur des bonnes doctrines (Friedlander 1972). Official Instruction. The foothold of the Neo-Classical in the French Academy was not maintained by the personal power of Ingres alone. For the style was legitimated by educational procedures, which guaranteed its transmission to a new generation of artists. This formal instruction entrenched the Neo-Classical style in the minds of students as a means of organizing and presenting reality through phases of art education standards in the nineteenth century ateliers. In elementary drawing instruction, the student copied from engravings called modéles de dessin. Each line in the model was clearly delineated so that the student could produce a meticulous copy. The procedure, which dated back to the seventeenth century, emphasized the value of slow and diligent labor, rather than individual expression (Boime 1971). More important, mastery of copying from the modéles de dessin provided the student with techniques through which his artistic perception itself came to be organized. A pupil so trained (and all students received this instruction either in a drawing school or the atelier) was inculcated with a vision of nature translatable into well-defined contours and hachure marks. Even when confronted with a live model or a landscape, his natural tendency was to execute the drawing in this manner. His basic instruction, derived from copying engravings, established a fixed mode of seeing and rendering nature (Boime 1971: 25). After mastery of copying from the modéles de dessin, the student graduated to drawing from plaster casts. These were typically unpainted The Challenge of Impressionism 9 figures molded in classical form. The instruction was aimed at teaching the student to render light and shadow without the distraction of colors. Only when the student had mastered these elements of drawing instruction was he permitted to move on to drawing from the live model (cf. Boime 1971). Because the student was required to master drawing first, it was often several years after his entrance to an atelier before he received instruction in painting. And, like drawing, painting instruction was broken down into clear steps. The first assignment typically required the student to copy a head. The paints were to be arranged on the palette in three groups – one for the light areas, one for the shadows, and a third for the demi-teintes. The student was instructed to apply the tones in their order of placement on the palette. The tones were not to be mixed on the canvas but rather applied as if the painter were working on a mosaic. The resultant effect in the ébauche or “first draft” was to be corrected by linking the tones using an individual brush for each demi-teint. When the ébauche was completed, it was set aside to dry. Once dry, the canvas was scraped and the details were drawn in with a white crayon. The same procedure was then repeated with a second layer of pigment. This permitted the execution of a more nearly perfect painting (cf. Boime 1971). The second application, or the fini, was less critical to the atelier exercises than in the preparation of a canvas for show or competition. However, the fini was the hallmark of the Neo-Classical style. The final phase of instruction, the compositional sketch, was a critical innovation in nineteenth century painting education. Each student was encouraged to carry a notebook in which he hastily executed sketches that might later be converted to paintings. The value of this instruction was called into question by the most traditional of the Academy members, especially when the sketch was used for judging preliminary competitions, since a hastily contrived drawing could scarcely embody the moral conscience required of a painting. The propriety of the sketch in public displays became especially pivotal in artistic debates when the sketch-like techniques appeared in the final canvases by painters such as the Impressionists. Challenges to the Neo-Classical Style Origins As is often the case, the seeds of revolt against Academic insistence on the Neo-Classical as the correct style were planted from within. Much of the push toward innovation in the nineteenth century stemmed from 10 The Challenge of Impressionism developments in landscape painting, and this branch of art originated from within the Academy. In 1708, Roger de Piles, a noted Academic painter, published a treatise in which he justified devoting an Academic career to landscape painting. In the treatise he took cognizance of the special hazards to painting which result from efforts to represent light and shadow. Valenciennes, an Academic painter of the nineteenth century, instigated a policy within the Academy, which took these special problems in landscape painting into consideration. In 1817, through his initiative, a landscape category for the Prix de Rome competition was instituted. This was the culmination of his efforts, which began with his treatise, Eléments de Perspective Pratique a l’Usage des Artistes (1800). In the treatise, Valenciennes had established landscape as a distinct branch of painting subject to autonomous standards. Boime (1971), in his work on the organization of French painting in the nineteenth century, describes how painting an outdoor motif led to departures from standard Academy painting procedures: …the landscape painter was confronted with a different situation: he had to paint the constantly shifting light of the sun. If he persisted in painting a single view throughout the day, the final result would be absurd: the background lighting would reflect the light of the sunrise; the middle ground the light of high noon; and the foreground the light of sunset (Boime 1971, 138). The efforts of nineteenth century artists to capture outdoor motifs led naturally to an elevation in the value of etudes, or quick sketches from nature. Furthermore, as the sketch-like techniques began to appear in the final paintings, the innovation process escalated, since the artists were able to increase their production substantially by omitting the fini. From Landscape to Realism Landscape painting in France blossomed with the Barbizon school, so named for the scenic spot, the hamlet of Barbizon in the Fôret de Fontainebleu that inspired its artists. Among the painters who shaped the Barbizon school, or who were influenced by it, 2 were most of the major painters of unorthodox trends who appeared in other contexts in the course of the nineteenth century. Most notable are the later proponents of Realism, such as Corot, Millet and even Courbet. The early work of Corot and Millet simply expanded the parameters for motifs to include rustic scenes. Courbet was much more militant. I hold…that painting is an essentially concrete art, and can consist only of the representation of things both real and existing. It is an The Challenge of Impressionism 11 altogether physical language, which for its works makes use of all visible objects. An abstract object, invisible or non-existent, does not belong to the domain of painting…Beauty as given by nature is superior to all the conventions of the artist. Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it (Courbet 1861, cited by Williams 1957, 214). This interpretation of painting was not designed to please the Academy officials, although Courbet won medals at the Salon during the same year. Two years later, however, his work took such extremes, with the Return from the Conference that he was prohibited from exhibiting at even the Salon des Refusés, an alternate exhibition staged under Napoleon III. Courbet’s work was associated with the socialist message early in his career by Proudhon, who saw political meaning in the Stone Breakers (1850). Courbet’s activities as President of the Art Commission during the Commune in 1870 made more manifest the relationship between his artistic work and ideological socialism. This political connection, as much as the artistic work, caused Academy members to reject Realism. Romanticism Landscape painting, albeit English, influenced the development of another school in French painting, which contested the values of the Academy, Romanticism. Through the Salon of 1824, Delacroix was brought into contact with the work of the English landscape painter Constable. Constable’s three landscapes, exhibited at the Salon, caught the eye of Delacroix through their technique, which rendered colors vibrant and alive. Constable had applied the various tones of green side by side, as if in preparation for an ébauche. These tones were kept separate in the final painting so that what would have been, in the NeoClassical form, a smooth and finished surface, remained broken and variegated (Friedlander 1952). The technique yielded an intense green that so captivated Delacroix that he is reputed to have altered his own painting, along the lines of that of Constable, after it had been hung in the gallery. This addition to Delacroix’s techniques intensified his already developing Romantic style, with its bold use of color over line. Again, as with landscape, the Romantic perspective was not especially new, but rather picked up the pre-Revolutionary baroque tendencies, which had first appeared with the work of Rubens (1577-1640): With Eugene Delacroix, a wave of wholly high baroque style, sparkling with light and color, swept into French painting with greater force than ever in artistic history before. The old fundamental 12 The Challenge of Impressionism contrasts, which French art theory of the seventeenth century had divided into opposing camps under the banners of Poussin and Rubens, and which had led to so much conflict, once more came to life, and more strongly. More than a difference of generation divided Ingres and Delacroix. When they showed their pictures at the Salon of 1824, a yawning gulf opened between two absolutely opposed artistic points of view (Friedlander 1952: 106). The new colorism, subjectivism and the frequent omission of fini by the Romantics became symbolic, within the official art world, of a decline in discipline and morals. Delacroix became the champion of the new stance, against the hostile reaction of Ingres in particular, who defended the Neo-Classical style. The two painters, Ingres and Delacroix, personified a debate which had its origins in the foundation of the French Academy, and which, by the mid-nineteenth century, embodied more than a mere question of correct art style. For Ingres, Delacroix, as the representative of the genius of colorism, was manifestly the Devil: ‘it smells of brimstone’, he once said when he came upon Delacroix in a Salon. Ingres was the self-appointed protector not only of linearism and classical tradition, but of morality and reason as well. Strangely enough, in the most extreme academic credo, line and linear abstraction embodied something moral, lawful, and universal, and every descent into the coloristic and irrational was a heresy and moral aberration that must be strenuously combated (Friedlander 1952: 5). Delacroix continued to champion the new Romantic tendencies from inside the Academy until his death in 1863. The Public Debate The Salon des Refusés In 1863, the problems besetting the Academy came to a climax. Nearly 4,000 canvases were rejected at the Salon in that year, with dissatisfaction among artists widespread and furious (Dunlop 1972). The complaints reached Napoleon III, who went to the Palais de l’Industrie in person to access the rejected canvases. Concluding that the complaints may have been justified, the following announcement was posted in Le Moniteur Universel: Numerous complaints have reached the Emperor on the subject of works of art that have been refused by the jury of the exhibition. His The Challenge of Impressionism 13 Majesty, wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints, has decided that the rejected works of art are to be exhibited in another part of the Palais de l’Industrie. This exhibition will be voluntary, and artists who may not wish to participate will need only to inform the administration, which will hasten to return their works to them (Le Moniteur Universel, 1863). The Salon des Refusés, as the alternate exhibition was called, was not altogether a success for the innovative artists. Many of the paintings were of such poor quality that it was difficult for the public to take the exhibition seriously. In this context, even high quality works in a marginal style were subject to scorn and ridicule. This was especially true of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, which aroused a hostility and prejudice that was to accompany every subsequent showing of his work. A commonplace woman of the demi-mode, as naked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies, dressed to the nines. These latter look like schoolboys on a holiday, perpetuating an outrage to play the man, and I search in vain for the meaning of this unbecoming riddle…This is a young man’s practical joke, a shameful open sore not worth exhibiting in this way (Etienne 1863). Thus, the Salon des Refusés must be largely viewed as a victory for the conservative forces in art, the jury and the established procedures of the Institut. However, if the innovative painter Manet, the eldest of the Impressionists, was unable to parlay his work into a receptive climate, the Salon des Refusés did make him visible to other young artists of similar persuasion. The Reforms of 1863 Following the Salon des Refusés, a second Imperial decree was published regarding the organization of the arts. The decree resulted from the work of a commission, authorized by Napoleon III, to structure an educational program that would foster “original talent” in the arts. The plans drawn up by the commission were influenced by Viollet le Duc, an architect of some erudition in medieval and Gothic art, and were couched in the language of Romanticism. This language emphasized the individual nature of originality from a democratic perspective. But in concrete terms, the reforms were minor. New courses were drawn up. The term of award for the Prix de Rome was reduced from five to two years, and the École des Beaux Arts was removed from the control of the Institut. 14 The Challenge of Impressionism Despite the trivial nature of the concrete reforms, the decree opened the topic for public debate. Within the art world, the debate centered on the meaning of originality and its place in the arts. The more conservative viewed originality as the result of conventional mastery and innovation within the “correct” style, while the more democratically inclined regarded it as the result of individual conviction. Opponents of Romanticism, such as Ingres, vehemently attacked this democratic definition. This is the destructive language of Romanticism, which expects to know everything without effort, and which leads the mass of men astray (Ingres 1863: 11-12). The debate regarding the definition of originality continued through the 1870’s. For the Romantic, or democratic, concepts threatened to undermine the raison d’être of the École and the Academy, which emphasized the importance of a long apprenticeship and a slow climb up the artistic hierarchy. The danger to art in France lies in…contempt for authority, the hatred of a hierarchical system even in the sphere of education, and a witless intellectual democracy which degrades the highest minds to the level of the lowest (Courajod 1864: ciii). Hence, the Romantic concepts represented, to the Academic painters, a defiance of discipline, authority, and the responsibilities entrusted to a privileged and elite minority, whose status rested on skills which could be acquired through diligent labor, moral decency and erudition in classical forms. The Art Critic Art critics were not part of the official organization of the French painting world, at least in the early part of the nineteenth century. But especially under the Second Empire, members of the administration were in a strategic position to reward those critics who endorsed official taste. This was a consequential source of bias in public debates since the art critic functioned to translate the meaning of paintings into words for an increasingly parvenu patronage base. When multiple and competing styles became available, art criticism shifted from a peripheral to a pivotal political act. No less than 52 articles were written for the major newspapers on the Salon of 1863, and these comprised only a small proportion of the reviews available to the public (Dunlop 1972). The extent of coverage is The Challenge of Impressionism 15 an indicator of the increasing importance of art criticism and the central position which the arts occupied in the society of nineteenth century France. The issues covered in the artistic debate were core issues, which transcended the level of art and were brought to the surface of public consciousness through the work of the art critics. The Art Public The art public of the nineteenth century Salons departed from those of the eighteenth century most significantly in their size and composition. Earlier Salons were relatively small, visited only by the nobility and a handful of prosperous bourgeoisie. This clientele had some knowledge and understanding of art. By the middle of the nineteenth century, public attendance at the Salons was often as high as 10,000 persons per day (White and White 1965). Most of these visitors had little knowledge in the arts and sought picturesque anecdotes rather than artistic or pictorial qualities (Hamilton 1964). Thus, even though this public displayed a growing interest in landscape (White and White 1965), due to the organization of status within the official world of art and to the endorsements of the art critics under Napoleon III, public taste was essentially conservative. Rosen and Zerner (1976) argue that the nineteenth century art public was naturally drawn to the paintings in the Neo-Classical style, and to the Academic fini, which acquired a meaning of its own. The fini, to the bourgeois art public, was the sign of a painting well done. It represented the final closure of a work of art, divorced from the reality of the mundane world, and subject to the standards of an aesthetic ideal that was endogenous to a school of art. The titled Academic artist, to this public, represented an enlightened chronicler (Boime 1971) of an ideal present, who took caution in seeing that the details of his work were neatly in place, clearly delineated, and distanced from the immediacy of mundane experience. Through the Academic fini, the subject matter of painting was rendered pure, readily intelligible to the audience, thereby protecting the public from more ambiguous ideas that might require interpretation (Rosen and Zerner 1976). The fini guaranteed that a certain amount of labor had gone into the preparation of the canvas and that objective rules had been followed. It permitted the viewer to apply clear and easily understood rules in aesthetic judgments. That this form of art was endorsed by the critics, the Ministry of Napoleon III and the official artistic hierarchy confirmed otherwise voluntary public preferences. 16 The Challenge of Impressionism The fini became the guarantee for the bourgeoisie, and especially the great bourgeoisie known as the State, against being swindled. The fini, which had the advantage of being easy to appreciate – unlike real technical virtuosity, 3 symbolizes careful work and is a pledge of social responsibility (Rosen and Zerner 1976: 33). It may be suggested that the Neo-Classical fini represented the transmutation of a worldview characteristic of an "ideal-typical" bourgeois position under Napoleon III. Rosen and Zerner argue that the fini symbolized the distance of the bourgeoisie, even their alienation, from both the “reality represented and from the reality of art” (Rosen and Zerner 1976: 33). The rejection of the Academic form, and of fini, on the part of artists who took an alternate stance with respect to their motifs, therefore implied an antagonistic relationship both to this parvenu social class, and to the State. The refusal of the fini in the nineteenth century modernist painting necessarily had a political meaning, which was independent of the individual opinions of the artists who could be right wing…Rejection of the liked surface proclaimed an opposition to the Academy and to the government as represented by the Ministry of Fine Arts…and indicated a refusal to hold everyday reality at a distance by a process of idealization (Rosen and Zerner 1976: 36). Impressionism The Setting The climate in which the first Impressionist exhibition appeared was one that had grown increasingly hostile to new art trends between 1863 and 1874. The Commune had created hostility to any sign of further revolutionary tendencies, and the compromised position of Courbet in 1870 made certain that public animosity was extended to all innovators in the arts. The Prussian victory over France left the new and uncertain government with a crippling indemnity so that political connotations aside; the economic situation suggested only conservative investments. The setting thus undermined the positive features of a revolution that was inspired only at the level of art. That the Impressionists began their innovative movement outside the official apparatus of the Academy was not a strategy designed to please the increasingly cautious public. But by the early 1860’s, many of the younger generation of artists were seeking alternatives to the structured education provided by the Academy. Most of the Impressionist painters, The Challenge of Impressionism 17 not surprisingly, met in the more unorthodox studios, which provided an escape from the rigidity of Academic training, such as the Académie Suisse and Gleyre’s atelier. The Académie Suisse, run by Suisse, provided a studio with a model, but no formal instruction. Gleyre’s atelier was more traditional, but Gleyre himself was innovative in his encouragement of landscape études executed by Monet, Bazille, Renoir, and Sisley only a year after their entrance to his studio. After 1866, much of the exchange between the Impressionists occurred at the Café Guérbois, where the painters, following Manet, met to discuss current issues in painting. The informal network that was constituted there made the Impressionist movement a social, as well as artistic, phenomenon. From the Café Guérbois, on the Rue des Batignolles, the circle of friends planned their most radical group venture – the independent group exhibition. The Impressionist Style – A Common Problem Focus Aesthetically, the Impressionist movement represents one of the most important, if not one of the most complex and inconsistent artistic movements of the nineteenth century (Sypher 1960). The style, heterogeneous though it was, was shaped by a multiplicity of techniques, all of which were developed to capture the immediacy of individually perceived reality or motifs. It was their common focus on this artistic problem, modern to the 1870’s, their brushwork use of color, a choice of subject matter from mundane life and a captured sense of tension between what is subjectively and objectively real which brought together an otherwise diverse group of painters. Manet, the eldest of the Impressionists, stood at one end of the stylistic spectrum covered by the term Impressionism. Manet…rid painting of all moral and intellectual preoccupations, and boldly and frankly, so that, in the words of Elie Faure, he became the ‘primitive of a new age’, restored to itself. He brought back, after so much storm and stress, the pure pleasure of painting for its own sake…which consists of manipulating dabs of colour, and not bothering about anything else…(Bazin 1958: 11). Monet, from the other endpoint of the style, taught painters to use their eyes (Bazin 1958). It was of Monet that Cézanne remarked: “He is only an eye, but what an eye.” Through this vision, captured by splashes of color applied directly to the canvas without preparatory sketches, Monet raised the ébauche to the level of art. He painted the act of seeing. Working between the two extremes of Monet and Manet, the core group of Impressionists – Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne and 18 The Challenge of Impressionism Bazille – stripped painting of conventions and brought art face to face with nature (Sypher 1960). By avoiding convention, and through the development of techniques that portrayed a perceived reality, the Impressionist movement was necessarily eclectic, and each artist’s style, in its very essence, individuated. The focus on perception shaped a common set of problems, while at the same time prescribing autonomous technical solutions. The Impressionist Style – A Configuration of Space Prior to the Impressionists, French painting involved the construction of a spatial illusion through the rules of perspective developed in the Renaissance. The illusion of three-dimensional space, or “scenographic” space, was perfected by additions to the repertoire of techniques employed by artists in the representation of perspective. However, the perfection of geometric spatial illusion was not a perfection of the representation of space – rather, it was the perfection of the means for representing one illusion of space (Francastel 1951). Francastel (1951) argues that the “scenographic” space in painting represented the expression of a particular world order and was therefore no more real, no matter how perfect its execution, than any other symbolic form. Rather, the scenographic spatial illusion may best be viewed as a correspondence structure for a theatrical vision of social life in which activity occurs on a stage. In painting, the “world theater” had a cubical design with fixed planes and orthogonals, which converged at a point deep inside the canvas. The painting itself provided a window with a single angle of vision through which regular acts on graded planes might be viewed (Francastel 1951). Neither the Romantics nor the Realists contested this vision of the world. The romantics may have contested an assumption upon which the construction of the scenographic space hinged – that the representation of colors must be conciliated with a linear scheme through technical tricks – but the overall configuration of the Romantic canvas remained scenographic (Francastel 1951). The painter designed his canvas with an “angle of vision opening from a single point of view, exterior to the canvas, symmetrical to the degree of coordinating parallels inside the picture” (Francastel 1951: 385). Nor did the Realists take the dramatic step in revolutionizing the representation of space: they changed only the objects represented. Thus, what made Impressionism a revolutionary style was the artists’ reformulation of the spatial problem. The world represented by the Impressionists was not that of a stage, formally contrived; when the eye symbolized by the painting changed focus, the motif changed in The Challenge of Impressionism 19 structure. The Impressionists did not work from whole to part, carefully conciliating color to an overall linear scheme; they began with a fleeting detail and from this fleeing starting point built a more complex structure (Sypher 1960). The space in the Impressionist painting did not define its objects; the objects defined their space (Francastel 1951). The Impressionists began with a novel set of assumptions regarding the representation of space, but they did not stylize a solution to the spatial problem. Rather, they focused on the development of techniques that could deal with problems in the relationship between light and form, in the triangulation of space and in tactile values, or polysensorial representations of space (cf. Francastel 1951; Sypher 1960). The Impressionists approached the spatial problem as a technical one, endogenous to art. This approach led to the rapid development of techniques that were employed to represent a vision that replaced objective, absolute values with subjective, relative ones. Hence, the precocious grasp of the spatial problem suggested by Impressionist art signals the emergence of a new worldview. This new space was…linked to changes in worldview, to a shift of interest and belief from the objective to the subjective, from absolute values to relative ones. The great adventure of the modern world is phenomenology, the consciousness of the role of the mind in structuring the world, a consciousness apparent in the paintings (Burke 1971: 144). Art and Society The Impressionists were incomprehensible in the context in which they appeared for at least three reasons: (1) they focused on the representation of a spatial problem, the origins of which were exogenous to the Academy, (2) they approached the problem as a technical one and thus rapidly developed artistic techniques, and (3) they did not refer back to the “objective” knowledge transmitted through the Academy. For these reasons, the Impressionists inadvertently challenged the assumptions upon which the Academy stood and upon which successful painting careers were based. That they took the liberty of displaying their work outside of the official Salon only compounded their initial artistic offense. But the mythology that gave meaning to the Neo-Classical style was disintegrating. France in 1874 was a republic, imperfect in its constitutional structure, but legitimated as such. Even though the public spirit was repentant in tone, new forces were emerging, which led, 20 The Challenge of Impressionism ultimately, to a secular state. Industrialization had brought new strata into center stage and new ideas into play. Hence, the scenographic space of the Neo-Classical style and the symbolic barrier of the Academic fini rested on ideas more appropriate to the past. The Impressionists did not solve the problem of the disintegrating mythology. Rather, they represented through painting “la fin des notable” – the end of elegance and splendour isolated from the laboring strata (Venturi 1939). The Impressionist movement gave dignity to life in those strata that did not aspire to the pretensions of antiquity. The painters depicted the challenge of a society presented with authentic questions of meaning “once the presence of old religious and social gods had been rejected” (Francastel 1951: 388). But the artistic representation, if apolitical in intent, posed a real threat to those enmeshed in a vanishing past. And as such, it and its artists faced severe public consequences. In conclusion, the clash between the Impressionists and the Academy in 1874 represents a clash between the artistic partisans of two worldviews. The Academy, with its preference for the Neo-Classical style, was symbolic of an ideology that bound a society of the past. It stood for an objective moral and social order, with innovation by a chosen few. The style was housed in a spatial illusion that placed objects and human existence in an unchanging frame, alien from, but definitive of, reality. Impressionism, on the other hand, represented the seeds of an emerging phenomenological consciousness, in which all forms were placed on an equal, but fleeting, plane. The Third Republic of France, at the time of the first Impressionist exhibition, was new and uncertain. The context was not ripe for the acceptance of Impressionism. Artistically, the style was incomprehensible; academically, it was iconoclastic; and politically, it was anarchistic. But, this was independent of the dispositions and conduct of the individual artists who, like Manet and Degas, might be extremely conservative. The artists were focused on technical problems that emerged at the level of art. The clash in styles between the Impressionists and the Neo-Classicists, therefore, was only symbolic of a broader clash of attitudes and values in the material world. And, as is often the case, the symbolic preceded the real. Chapter 2 ________________________________ The Post-Impressionists It would thus be an error, into which the best intentioned revolutionaries, like Proudhon, all too often have fallen, systematically to require a precise socialist tendency in works of art, for this tendency will be found much more powerful and eloquent in the pure aesthetes, revolutionaries by temperament, who, moving far off the beaten path, paint what they see, as they feel it, and very often unconsciously give a hard blow of the pick-axe to the old social structure (Signac 1891). Introduction During the 1880’s the Impressionists attracted new recruits to the modern movement. This new generation of painters, which followed in the footsteps of the Impressionists –Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Signac, Pissarro, Redon, and Luce –, was even more heterogeneous than the older Impressionists. Moreover, if the older painters had lived in isolation from political and social goals, many of the Neo-Impressionists used painting to express anarchist sympathies. Van Gogh, an isolate by character, revealed these only through his sense of mission, fulfilled by an empathy for the wretched masses, which was expressed through 22 The Post-Impressionists painting. Wrote Vincent to his brother, Theo, in 1880: “I feel that my work has its roots in the heart of the people and that I must lose myself in the most humble classes to seize life sur le vif…” (Van Gogh 1882). The Neo-Impressionists – Pissarro, Signac, Seurat, and Luce, were more explicit in their profession of socialist anarchy, and have been linked to the political movement in France through their correspondence with anarchist-communist Jean Grave. “I firmly believe that something of our ideas, born as they are of the anarchist philosophy, passes into our work,” wrote Pissarro in 1892. At the same time, Pissarro maintained an antagonistic position regarding overt proselytizing, and propagandistic forms of art (Nochlin 1966). Gauguin, the exception, politically speaking, was reproached by at least Pissarro for his “reactionary art.” Given the expressed political dispositions of the younger painters, it is not surprising that pubic misunderstanding of their work was high and appreciation low throughout the 1880’s. Much of the scorn shown for their works at independent exhibitions was not unlike that which had accompanied the Impressionist exhibition in 1874. But this may have been as much a product of the economic depression, which fostered conservative investments in the arts as the political conduct of the painters. For the older Impressionists, too, failed to secure patrons during this period. However, while Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet lived to old age, “playing the parts of patriarchs of the art world after having been the young rebels” (Bazin 1958: 49), the key painters of the younger generation – Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Seurat – died young, before seeing the success of the modern style. This chapter describes the work of the Neo-Impressionists, their relationships to the anarchist movement, their critics, and the contribution of these to the political interpretation of Impressionism. Cézanne While Paul Cézanne, born in 1839, belonged to the generation of the Impressionists by temperament and style, he perhaps more than the other painters of the Batignolles group foreshadowed the work of the PostImpressionists. His isolation, eccentricity, extreme sensitivity, and frequent fits of rage earned for him a reference, by Roger Fry, as the first “wild man of modern art” (Dunlop 1972), but the description might be appropriately applied to Gauguin and Van Gogh as well. The character similarities aside, Cézanne’s work reveals a perspective and level of abstraction more frequently associated with the Post-Impressionist painters than with the original Batignolles group. The Post-Impressionists 23 Paul Cézanne is generally accepted as the first modern painter. In his transformation of a personal destiny into the content of art, in his acceptance of loneliness as the basic condition of modern man, in his expression of this condition through the inviolable remoteness of the objects in his paintings, and, above all, in his assertion of the pictorial world as a paradigm rather than a simulacrum of nature – an independent world of permanent being in which the significance of depicted entities lies in their relationships to each other rather than to any external reality – in all these respects Cézanne brought to its culmination the revolutionary efforts of the avant-garde of the 19th century and set forth the problems of the 20th (Nochlin 1966: 83). Cézanne, while scornful of the official Academy, and overtly defiant of the mannerisms of the bourgeoisie, was apolitical. Much of his time was spent in isolation, painting in his native Provence. He was introduced to Paris by his childhood friend, Émile Zola, who no doubt profited as a critic from his discussions with Cézanne. The two friends parted after the publication of Zola’s novel, L’Oeuvre, which transformed Cézanne into Claude, the novel’s hero. Cézanne also entertained long discussions and a lengthy correspondence with Émile Bernard, symbolist critic, although this was late in the painter’s career – after 1904. For the most part, Cézanne was a painter, and not at all at home in the world of words. Divisionism The Impressionist’s interest in light and color provided the starting point for a second generation of modernist painters. Camille Pissarro, late in his career, his son Lucien, Signac, and especially Seurat, through a rigorous “scientism” in the application of colors, made painting subject to a discipline autonomous from the objects represented. The “divisionist” techniques, as developed by Seurat and his followers, were influenced by the work of Columbia University physicist Ogden Rood (Nochlin 1966), if rooted in the more instinctive presentation of the effects of light by the Impressionists. The techniques, characterized by a methodical and “scientific” division of tones on the canvas, resulted in an optical mixture, united by the retina. Through divisionism, the “NeoImpressionist” insure (d) a maximum of luminosity, of color intensity, and of harmony (Signac 1899). The methodical and “scientific” division of tones in NeoImpressionist painting represents an extension of work on an artistic problem uncovered by the Impressionists. Hence, Seurat and his followers were not artistic radicals and did not view themselves as such. 24 The Post-Impressionists Rather, they were reformers of the Impressionist style. But, the process of abstraction, of “de-realization,” was a key step in the logical progression toward modern art. The de-realization is one of the most revolutionary elements of the technique. The yoke of the system of small brushstrokes, of optical mixing, and of the science of the relationships of lines has paradoxically resulted in a liberating element: an escape toward pure painting. The spectacle of the world and the skill of the painter, filtered through a Symbolist scientism, made of the canvas itself a mathematical object, a domain of research which no longer has much to do with the world of appearances. The surface of the painting reflects only itself. One can see the consequences that such an attitude would have for Cubism and abstraction (Nora 1967: 61). Although the Neo-Impressionists were united in their anarchist sympathies, the individual painters expressed these in different ways. Pissarro, a convert from the initial Impressionist camp, was the most erudite in socialist theory, having read at least Marx and Kropotkin (Rewald 1962). He admired the work of Proudhon but was averse to the authoritarian implications of making art the servant of socialist theory (Herbert 1961; Nochlin 1966). While wishing to participate in the social reforms of his epoch, Pissarro limited his actual activities to contributions of artistic work, such as cover designs for Kropotkin’s Les Temps Nouveaux. These contributions apparently did not compromise his style, as they departed little from his paintings depicting peasant scenes (Herbert 1961). Signac, whose attraction to anarchy was largely sentimental, like Pissarro, held that overtly propagandistic art, as endorsed by Proudhon, was ineffective. But his anarchism was less intellectual – more a part of his instinctual reaction to oppression. It was expressed in painting only by his themes of workers, factories, and rural peasant life. Signac did, however, engage in correspondence with Jean Grave, who routinely sent the painter copies of his work for comment (Herbert 1961). And at least one article defending the anarchist tendencies of Neo-Impressionist art is believed to have been written by him for La Revolte (Herbert 1961). Luce, 4at the other extreme, produced purely propagandistic art. He executed most of the work for the Pere Peinard, an anarchist newspaper, and made substantial contributions to Kropotkin’s Temps Nouveaux. Wrote Grave of Luce: “But I must give Luce a special place. First, it is to him that I was obliged for the acquaintance with other artists and with several writers…Always ready, one could demand any service of him and he would hasten to satisfy you” (Grave, cited by Herbert 1961: 187). The Post-Impressionists 25 Rewald (1962) indicates that while expressed sympathy with the socialist-anarchist movement and contributions through painting may have been high on the part of the Neo-Impressionists, actual political activity was low. It was not so much that they were in favor of bombs, but rather that dynamite appeared to be not a wholly unjustified means of ending social inequities when other measures had failed or seemed too slow. They were idealists, not agitators…most of them shunned direct political activities (Rewald 1962: 154). The Neo-Impressionist movement found its articulate spokesperson in critic Felix Fenéon, one of the founders of the Revue Independante, in 1884. Fenéon became a close friend and sympathetic critic to, especially, Pissarro and Signac, with whom he engaged in long and careful discussions regarding their work (Nochlin 1966). His book, Les Impressionistes en 1886, was based on these interviews and is the work from which the term néo-impressionisme used to designate the style of Seurat and his followers, was popularized. Fenéon also served as the liaison between Pissarro, Seurat and Signac and his own colleagues, the Symbolist poets and writers (Nochlin 1966), and between at least Signac and art dealer Bernheim-Jeune (Rewald 1973). These affiliations strengthened the association between Neo-Impressionism and anarchism. Symbolism After having proclaimed the omnipotence of scientific observation and deduction for eighty years with childlike enthusiasm, and after asserting that for its senses and scalpels there did not exist a single mystery, the nineteenth century at last seems to perceive that its efforts have been in vain, and its boast puerile. Man is still walking in the midst of the same enigmas, in the same formidable unknown, which has become even more obscure and disconcerting since its habitual neglect. A great many scientists and scholars today have come to a halt discouraged. They realize that this experimental science, of which they were so proud, is a thousand times less certain than the most bizarre theogony, the maddest metaphysical reverie, the least acceptable poet’s dream, and they have a presentiment that this haughty science which they proudly used to call ‘positive’ may perhaps be only a science of what is relative, of appearances, of ‘shadows’, as Plato said, and that they themselves have nothing to put on old Olympus, from which they have removed the deities and unhinged the constellations (Aurier 1892: 1). 26 The Post-Impressionists Vincent Van Gogh, an isolate, was never directly associated with either Gauguin, the true forerunner of symbolism in painting, or with the Symbolist writers, excepting Bernard, whom he met in Paris in 1888. Nonetheless, his use of color and form as a language through which to express moods and emotions makes his position as a painter comparable to that of the Symbolist painters such as Redon, or the synthetist Gauguin. The first article which appeared on Van Gogh, written by Symbolist critic Aurier for Mercure de France, in fact, “completely assimilate(d) the artist to the Symbolist position” (Nochlin 1966: 135). He is almost always a symbolist…a symbolist who feels the continual need to clothe his ideas in precise, ponderable, tangible forms, in intensely sensual and material envelopes. Beneath this morphic envelope, beneath this very fleshly flesh, this very material matter, there lies, in almost all his canvases, for those who know how to find it, a thought, an Idea, and this Idea, the essential substratum of the work, is, at the same time, its efficient and final cause. As for the brilliant, radiant symphonies of color and line, no matter what their importance may be for the painter, in his work they are merely simple, expressive means, simple methods of symbolization (Aurier 1890). Émile Bernard, in Brittany, introduced Gauguin to the Symbolist ideas, current in literary circles, during the summer of 1888. Prior to that time, Gauguin painted in the Impressionist style. Bernard, much more at home with words and theory than Gauguin, provided the painter with the epistemology which was to guide his later work (Nochlin 1966). Synthetism, or the abstracted and simplified synthesis of color and form, as it appears in the work of Gauguin after the summer of 1888, was the product of the collaboration between Gauguin and Bernard; however, a later bicker between them led to a mutual renouncement of the collaborative responsibility (Nochlin 1966). Redon, like Van Gogh, was an isolate, whose work is typically associated with that of other figures in the Symbolist movement. But unlike Van Gogh, who actually criticized Bernard for mysticism and abstraction and urged him to turn to nature for themes, Redon preferred to paint exclusively from his own mind. Socially speaking, he “withdrew into the hallucinated visions of his mind” (Herbert 1961: 182). Although aloof from other figures in the Symbolist movement, Redon was revered by Mallarmé, Huysmans, Denis, Mirbeau, and, later, Matisse (Nochlin 1966). The Post-Impressionists 27 Art and Art Criticism Since Van Gogh and Gauguin died young, Redon was an isolate, and none of these three painters were closely associated with the NeoImpressionists, the connectors between the Post-Impressionists stem more from a perceived communality in their work than from overt acquaintance. This brief discussion of the artists, in fact, alludes to the critical role of Symbolist writers Bernard, Fenéon, and Aurier in interpreting their work as in harmony with the more general Symbolist movement. However, as Venturi (1936) argues, the first two histories of Impressionism – Lecompte (1892) and Geffroy (1894) – arbitrarily regroup the “most discordant tendencies.” Thus, “not being able to justify impressionism with regard to a universal idea of art, criticism was not…able to understand the new artistic tendencies in art at the end of the nineteenth century.” The expounded symbolisms “were pretexts for developing the taste of the abstraction of form and of geometrical composition…” (Venturi 1936: 266). Whether Venturi is right or wrong in his philosophical speculations, the point is that even the critics of the day were not always able to distinguish between the various groups and Impressionist tendencies accurately. The association of ideas and artists, even to this most sophisticated public, was often one of conjecture, or, a generalization stemming from the physical location from which various artists displayed their work. Thus, logical deduction, rather than speculation, suggests that the less involved art public may have encountered some difficulty in determining the boundaries of artistic groups, and, more important, in making decisions based upon secure and universal standards for aesthetic judgments. 28 The Post-Impressionists Chapter 3 ________________________________ Structures of the Modern Movement Introduction Critical to the shift in aesthetic sensibilities apparent after 1895, and through which the Impressionists obtained patrons, was the institution of alternatives to the State sponsored Salons. The independent Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886 marked only the first step toward pluralism in the structures for painting display. In 1884, the new recruits to the modernist movement, especially Signac, Seurat, and Redon, founded the Societé des Artistes Indépendants. In 1890, the official Salon split into two factions, creating, along with the Salon des Indépendants, three alternatives through which artists might display their work. In 1903, a fourth alternative was made available with the founding of the Salon d’Automne. Even more important to the pluralization of structures for artistic display, were the art dealers, whose interest in the modern movement was frequently guided by commercial motive. The dealers, especially Durand-Ruel, Petit, the Bernheims, Theo Van Gogh and Vollard, became titans of influence in the art world during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Only that of the great patrons of the Renaissance, 30 Structures of the Modern Movement historically, surpassed their private influence. But in contrast to the Renaissance patrons, the influence of the art dealer was expressed vis-àvis the public, as opposed to the artists themselves. The marketing strategies of the dealers went hand-in-hand with the emergence of critics and historians for the new styles. Often, as in the case of Felix Fenéon, spokesperson for the Neo-Impressionists, the critics operated independently from the dealers. But other times, as part of efforts to market modern art, specific art dealers such as Vollard or Durand-Ruel published journals sympathetic to the modernist movement as part of more general strategies aimed at creating a more receptive public. Such efforts also included the publication of brochures to explain paintings displayed in a specific exhibition with introductions written by sympathetic critics. The institution of alternate structures for the display of paintings and the enterprising techniques of the dealers provided the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the acceptance and establishment of modern art. These provided a set of connectors between the artist and public taste. But Durand-Ruel, for example, for all his strategy, failed to achieve economic success in France until the tide turned in 1890. By 1886, he was forced to carry paintings to the United States for sale there to a more receptive public. And even during the nineties, a substantial proportion of his purchases were shipped to the United States for sale at his branch gallery in New York. The sufficient conditions for the success of modern art in France came only with the emergence of a “taste public,” for which the style held an affinity. This chapter covers the contribution of the painters through their collective efforts to the institution of alternative structures for the display of art. The role of the dealer, especially that of Durand-Ruel, in marketing Impressionist paintings in France and abroad is also covered. It is suggested that these two groups, the painters and the dealers, acted as independent forces, with autonomous, often conflicting, motives, even though they worked toward a common goal: public acceptance of modern art. Alternate Exhibitions The Impressionist Exhibitions The Batignolles Group opened their first collective exhibition at Nadar’s studio, on April 15, 1874. This step, which circumvented the official procedures for showing paintings, was pre-empted by the oneman-shows given by Manet and Courbet. But it was met with special Structures of the Modern Movement 31 scorn and ridicule by the art public, and hostile reviews by the critics. Especially damaging were the charges of “madness” which began circulating through the various reviews. The case of M. Cézanne can serve as a warning of the fate in store for (the Batignolles painters). They will go from one idealization to another, until they reach such a pitch of unrestrained romanticism that Nature is no more than a pretext for dreaming; and the imagination becomes incapable of formulating anything except personal and subjective fantasies, without a trace of general rationality, because they are uncontrolled and cannot possibly be verified in reality (Prouvair 1874). The exhibition had the effect of alienating art lovers rather than converting aesthetic taste to harmony with the new style. The negative public reaction to the exhibition brought financial disaster to the painters, who were forced to liquidate at a sale at the Hotel Drouot in the following year. Since the sale at the Hotel Drouot came so soon after the exhibition of 1874, the painters commanded only half the usual price for their work. Moreover, the police were called in to protect the auctioneer (Bazin 1958). Despite the hostile reception to their work, the Impressionists continued to exhibit as a group until 1886. In the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition, held in 1880, the group was joined by Gauguin, who continued to exhibit with them until 1886. For the Eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in 1886, the group included Seurat as well. Societé des Indépendants In 1884, a group of independent artists was founded by the younger generation of painters whose works, like those of the initial Impressionists, had been rejected at the official Salon. This groupe des indépendants, which included Seurat, Signac and Redon, was more heterogeneous than the Impressionists. During their first exhibition in 1884, the painters, at the initiative of Dubois-Pillet, established the bylaws of a permanent organization – The Society of Independent Artists. The first of the annual exhibitions sponsored by the group was held in December 1884. Subsequent exhibitions in 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, and 1891 included the works of Seurat, Signac, Redon, Van Gogh, Luce, L. Pissarro and Toulouse-Lautrec. The Salon des Indépendants was the “real showcase for progressive art” (Dunlop 1972: 90). However, no jury whatsoever presided over the exhibitions, so standards were not always of the highest (Dunlop 1972). Nonetheless, between 1890 and 1914, a number of the most important 32 Structures of the Modern Movement works in modern art were exhibited there. Often, due to the mixed quality of the exhibitions as well as the lack of comprehension of the new trends in art, public reaction was not unlike that to the Salon des Refusés or the initial Impressionist exhibition (Rewald 1962). Split of the Salon In 1890, the societé des artistes Français organized the annual Salons. Within this group, a revolt broke out again over the distribution of awards. The more traditional of the official painters under the leadership of Bouguereau clung to the advantages of their status under the older system, while a more liberal faction under the direction of Meissonier formed a new group, the Societé Nationale des Beaux Arts. The new society included Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus, Duran, Stevens, Sargent, Boldini, Carriére and Rodin (Rewald 1962). Salon d’Automne In 1903, a fourth Salon was added to “fill the gap between the anarchist Independents and the increasingly strict Nationale” (Dunlop 1972: 90). The Salon d’Automne was largely shaped by safe, traditional works, but did provide a showplace for coherent displays of avant-garde trends such as the Fauves in 1905 and the Cubists in 1910 (Dunlop 1972). The Dealers During the last decade of the nineteenth century, although “some of the greatest art ever created in the history of Europe was produced…it was still met with widespread contempt and hostility where it was not simply dismissed with chilly indifference” (Kramer 1977: 30). Even the more easily understood art of the Impressionists, most of whom were still living, was often greeted with scorn. This may have been partly a consequence of the vicissitudes of the French economy, which picked up slightly in the 1880’s but quickly ground to a near halt. Rewald (1973) claims that the deflation, “like all calamities of this kind…first affected the ‘speculative values’ the Impressionists then represented rather than the ‘safe investments’ enjoyed by the works of officially acclaimed and internationally admired artists” (Rewald 1973: 5). But the eventual success of the Impressionist style, incontestable after 1895, resulted from Structures of the Modern Movement 33 the speculative investments and subsequent marketing of art dealer Durand-Ruel. Paul Durand-Ruel, key dealer of Impressionist art, took over the direction of his family’s business in 1865 upon the death of his father, Jean. The “gallery,” through the enterprise of Paul’s father, had grown from a papeterie to a retail business associated with the art movements, which had begun outside the official Academy apparatus. Jean DurandRuel had been especially drawn to the work of the Romantics and to the “School of 1830,” often supplying the artists with materials in exchange for their finished works. Through an acquaintance named Arrowsmith, Jean also acquired a taste for English landscapes and purchased several works by Constable. Thus, through his father, Paul grew up in an environment frequented by Grós, Gericault, Delacroix, Corot, Daumier, Marilhat, Troyen, Diaz, Dupré, Rousseau and Millet. When he assumed control of his father’s business in 1865, the work of these painters comprised much of the stock. And much in the fashion of his father, Paul became attached to the modern painters of his own generation (cf. Durand-Ruel 1939). Paul Durand-Ruel did not make contact with the Impressionists until 1870 when owing to the war, he transported his canvases to London and organized a series of exhibitions. While in London, he came into contact with Monet and Pissarro and from that time forward became the champion of their cause. Upon his return to Paris after the defeat of the Commune, he acquired over 103 canvases from Pissarro, Guillaumin, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley and Monet (Durand-Ruel archives, livres des comptes). These purchases by Durand-Ruel were part of a strategy that he pioneered as an art dealer – that of buying canvases from artists when no immediate buyer was in sight. It was this activity that earned him the reputation as patron of Impressionist art in the Renaissance sense of the term. The Impressionists’ dealer, in effect, had recreated the role of patron – in the Renaissance sense of the word. He worked from a different economic base than the patron of earlier centuries and his motives were different. Yet the support artists received from him was a close approximation of the patronage relationship of earlier times. This relationship was not merely a matter of money. Often, Durand-Ruel, like Renaissance patrons, simply did not have the cash, or was in too precarious a financial situation to pay his painters a steady living allowance. But the Impressionists, unlike other painters, excluded from the tight circles of government patronage, had someone of whom they could demand regular support, recognition, and praise (White and White 1965: 126). 34 Structures of the Modern Movement Although Durand-Ruel acquired most of his Impressionist paintings during the 1870’s and 1880’s, these did not sell. Thus, the dealer was faced with continuous financial hardship. Finally, in 1886 the tide turned when Durand-Ruel gained an opening onto the American market. He set up an exhibition, The Impressionists of Paris, in New York in April of that year, in rooms provided by the American Art Association. The reviews of the exhibition were mixed, but the financial success was sufficient to encourage Durand-Ruel regarding the prospects of the style and the potential of the United States market. In 1888, he opened his branch gallery in New York (cf. Durand-Ruel 1939). By 1890, Durand-Ruel had begun organizing exhibitions in other major cities all over Europe. These exhibitions marked the beginning of the unquestioned success of both the Impressionist style and DurandRuel. The international activities of the dealer made him less dependent on the vicissitudes of the French economy and freer from the slowly changing sensibilities of the French art public. This public realized, almost too late, that the vast bulk of Impressionist art had left France for good (White and White 1965). Soon enough, other dealers began following the pattern Durand-Ruel had set through his shrewd speculations in Impressionist art and his marketing techniques. Georges Petit, Bernheim, Bernheim-Jeune, Vollard, and, to a lesser extent, Theo Van Gogh began competing for the works of artists and the French public. One by one, they sponsored oneman-shows or group exhibitions, through which they might draw buyers of paintings in the newer styles. The artists adapted to this system by using the inter-dealer competition to parlay their works into higher prices, often to the chagrin of Durand-Ruel. But the new system did not always work to the advantage of the artist, whose very livelihood might depend on the market. However, from a contemporary perspective, it is pointless to judge the system of private enterprise and competition in the arts in terms of good and evil. It simply was, for all its irregularities, the system through which modern artists established their points of contact with the art public, as the only viable alternative to the Salons. In a period when the state enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the exhibition of contemporary art, and thus in the making of contemporary reputations, this particular branch of private enterprise offered a creative alternative to artists – often, as we know, the very best artists – and their small, faithful public. In the age of avantgarde, certainly the small dealer’s gallery was an instrument of aesthetic independence. In our time, when the imperatives of the avant-garde impulse no longer have the same force, such galleries continue to play an important role in keeping the art scene open, pluralistic, and relatively immune to monolithic takeovers. If dealers Structures of the Modern Movement 35 have sometimes been parasites on the body of high art, they have often, too, been pubic benefactors, serving the interests of great talent and great achievement (Kramer 1977: 84). In the context of le belle époque, it is critical to note the autonomy of the individual dealers and painters, their tastes and their motives. While Bernheim-Jeune may have been linked to the anarchist movement through his sponsorship of overtly anarchist art, Durand-Ruel was politically conservative and, as a dealer, remained riveted to the painters of his own generation. Ironically, considering his contribution to pluralism in the arts and democratic forms, he referred to the nineteenth century as the “unhappy century of democracy.” And throughout his life he remained faithful to the God of the Roman Catholic Church (Venturi 1939). This underscores one of the central themes of this work; that the creation, evaluation, distribution, and purchase of works of art in a democratic society are typically independent events, guided by autonomous sets of goals and means and connected by voluntary preferences, given a choice. 36 Structures of the Modern Movement Chapter 4 ________________________________ The Markets for Impressionist Art Art is not a superstructure; it is a means of exploring reality and expressing human consciousness. The key to understanding the specific meaning and role of particular paintings is in the ideological community which they attract (cf. Burke 1971; Rosenberg 1967). Introduction Central to understanding the structural transformation of the "art world" (cf. Becker 1982) in the nineteenth century and to an interpretation of meaning for “avant-garde” styles such as Impressionism are the patrons or audience. Their relationship to artworks was entirely different than in earlier historical periods during which a patron exercised enormous and direct influence over the artist, or in the academic system in which "experts" and "masters" controlled definitions of art and the distribution networks. Under the newer "dealer-critic" system patrons could express preferences and tastes through purchases or collections from a diverse range of options in paintings and other cultural artifacts available on the market. And these patrons likewise came from a wider range of class, status, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. 38 The Markets for Impressionist Art The choice carries an implicit understanding concerning affinities between modern artists and their patrons regarding shared psychological orientations or “ideological communities” – avant-garde political parties – which subjectively predisposed them toward the newer ideas or a worldview associated with the rise and institution of the style (cf. Rosenberg 1967). The basic idea is that the voluntary choices of patrons enables expression of both a class position through conspicuous consumption (cf. Veblen 1934) and at the same time a value orientation or stand (cf. Weber 1978: 24-25). The low level of correspondence between the political goals and artistic expression among the initial Batignolles group, the artistic reformers of the 1880’s, the art critics, and the dealers was nonetheless amplified by the contingent nature of the relationship between painter and patron under the newer market system. That is, independent patrons could actually express values through relatively autonomous choices, however the absence of a determinative relationship and set models of "the beautiful" rendered methods for interpreting and explaining aesthetic judgments more arduous. Therefore, while the implicit value conflict between traditional and modern worldviews might seem transparent, the very nature of autonomous choices among a wider range of people indicates the need for probabilistic rather than inelastic models. These require empirical data to associate, for example, the aesthetic mentalité represented in the works of art and the specific political movements that may have contributed to the unquestioned success of the Impressionist style in fin de siècle France. Claims Rosenberg, more generally, “…sympathy (often without understanding) could be taken for granted between aesthetic and political vanguards, though it is usually difficult to trace the influence of radical political ideas in the art works, or the influence of radical aesthetic insights in the politics” (Rosenberg 1967: 90). Highlighting this indeterminacy, brilliant art historian, Albert Boime (1976: 139) noted the "echo" of "anarchistic tendencies" manifest in late nineteenth-century art and the rugged individualism of entrepreneurs whose fortunes were made in the early phases of capitalism. Sociologically speaking, of course, new wealth might seek to emulate the already entrenched dominant strata or, as Boime so eloquently states: "begin to emancipate themselves from the aristocratic model and search for exotic styles to complement their budding individuality" (1976: 144). He goes on to suggest that the pinnacle of the rising strata, especially the powerful bankers and financiers of the period, were Protestants or Jews, a topic deeply embedded in the fabric of social theory through the work of Max Weber (2002) in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This group, according to Boime, blazed a trail in the acquisition of art collections. Moreover, if the early collectors were inspired by an The Markets for Impressionist Art 39 assimilation model and thus emulated the landed aristocracy in their artistic choices, they nonetheless instilled in their offspring a passion for art collection that became their legacy to subsequent generations. Hence the irony embedded in the new artist-patron relationship of fin-de-siècle France: The Jew, notorious symbol of the arriviste, the very embodiment of the bourgeois spirit from which the artist purportedly sought liberation, was none other than the patron who guaranteed the artist's aspirations. At the same time the artist wished to épater le bourgeoisie, he was bound to him in a symbiotic relationship (Boime 1976: 184). The Dreyfus Affair rendered the politically unconscious aesthetic orientation of French Jews into a shared conscious political stand. The Affair originated in the arrest of a highly assimilated Jewish army captain in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus of Alsace-Lorraine. The plight of Captain Dreyfus, defendant, tried in camera, convicted of treason, and sentenced to deportation and life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, exposed and inflamed deep fissures between modern and traditional groups in French society. The conflict was amplified by the highly visible participation of intellectuals, writers, and artists whose expressive public works became symbols that catalyzed an ideological clash of worldviews with domestic violence often reaching levels associated with revolution (cf. Tilly 1975: 57-59). Anti-Dreyfusards aligned with defenders of the Army and Church and inflamed public envy and hatred though vicious Anti-Semitic attacks that equated the status of Dreyfus as a Jew from the AlsaceLorraine border with a natural inclination toward treason. Coser (1965, 1970: 217) suggests "the Affair assumed so central a place in French political history because it revealed and accentuated deep fissures in the French body politic." In 1894, the Third Republic of France had just entered its third decade without yet achieving universal public approbation. The Ultramontanes, initially strong, had lost much of their power and influence such that Halévy could refer to the period as “la fin des notables.” Nonetheless large numbers of influential Catholics were not yet reconciled to accepting a Republic (Coser 1965). The economic crises of the 1880’s had conditioned the reappearance of extreme Leftist movements, while financial swindles, especially those associated with the collapse of the Union Générale and the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal, had eroded the trust of the even the new stalwart middle classes. Moreover, these two scandals had implicated individual Jews and given rise to Drumont's vicious anti-Semitic press, La Libre Parole, which initiated the story prematurely scandalizing Dreyfus by publicly 40 The Markets for Impressionist Art announcing the arrest. Through Drumont's active and uncensored press, details of the Affair unfurled across France unfettered by basic legal protections against libel in the context of a republic, already threatened by enemies from both the Left and the Right. Coser (1965: 217) described the Affair as "a battle in which rival factions of intellectuals were standard bearers and symbol makers." Basic sociological theory predicts that the conflict would heighten the tension and group solidarity so as to transform and initial shared lifeworld and aesthetic orientation into a political commitment (cf. Coser 1956). From this comes the thesis of this book: an initial mentalité held in common among French Jews in fin-de-siècle France that predisposed them to a preference for Impressionist art was amplified during the course of the Dreyfus Affair. The thesis departs from while remaining indebted to the work of Albert Boime (1976) in its basic sociological framework. Boime's work, as an art historian, focused on the provenance of individual works and the details regarding specific collectors. This work aims at testing a hypothesis using the probabilistic methodology of the social sciences. There is little focus or concern about the destination of a specific work of art or the intellectual/value rationale behind an individual collector. By contrast, this research seeks to establish a statistical relationship between an increasing Jewish patronage of Impressionist art, relative to other patron groups, and the intensification of interest in modern aesthetic expression as the events of the Dreyfus Affair unfolded in France. The sociological framework and methodology applied to artistic taste publics was entirely legitimated by worldrenowned French sociologist, the late Pierre Bourdieu, and his famous book, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (1979). This research thus complements the work of erudite Boime without usurping it. Methodology Data Collection In 1972, though a letter of introduction from the Cultural Attaché of the American Embassy in Paris, France, I obtained an interview with Charles Durand-Ruel, and through him access to the private archives of the Durand-Ruel Gallery. With the help of librarian E. Gruet, I elected to use the livres des comptes for the gallery for the years between 1868 and 1910. These records were perhaps the most extensive and accurate information available on the pattern of sales for Impressionist art since Paul Durand-Ruel was the primary agent of most of the painters until the The Markets for Impressionist Art 41 turn of the century. This thesis might appropriately be checked against information in the Catalogue Raisonné, which compiles similar data in a different format. It might be argued that the exclusive use of the livres des comptes from the Durand-Ruel Gallery created a bias in the sample. However, this argument is easily countered by three facts: (1) Paul Durand-Ruel maintained contractual relationships with six of the eight major Impressionist painters during their periods of major productivity, (2) the livres des comptes provide the most complete and extensive intact records of financial transactions, since those of the second largest dealers of the style, Bernheim and Cassirer, were partially destroyed during the Second World War, and (3) since the guiding hypothesis of this study was aimed at establishing a connection between Impressionist art and the Dreyfusist cause, and since the patrons were hypothesized to be overrepresented by Jews, the use of Paul Durand-Ruel’s initial records, a Roman Catholic, provide the most conservative possible test of the hypotheses. The livres des comptes of the Durand-Ruel gallery contain a complete listing of all paintings acquired by the dealer in order of the date of acquisition. The unit of record keeping for entries into the original books was the purchase of a painting. The same painting was entered twice: (1) if the painting was bought by Durand-Ruel, sold by Durand-Ruel, and bought by Durand-Ruel a second time, or (2) if a painting was bought by Durand-Ruel but not sold before the books for a given time period were closed. The latter resulted from the use of an accounting system that preceded double-entry bookkeeping thus unsold paintings were listed as a new entry each time the accounting records were updated. Most paintings, because of this system, appeared at least twice. A check of duplicate listings was possible since both the entry and the painting were given unique identification numbers by Durand-Ruel. The livres des comptes contained the following information for each listing: 1) entry number 2) name of artist 3) date purchased by Durand-Ruel 4) price paid 5) dimensions of the canvas 6) painting identification number 7) specification of the work as either oil, charcoal, water color, lithograph, or pen and ink 8) name of person selling painting to Durand-Ruel 9) the retail price requested by Durand-Ruel 10) name of person to whom the painting was sold 42 The Markets for Impressionist Art 11) the date sold by Durand-Ruel 12) the actual price paid to Durand-Ruel at the time of sale Between 1972 and 1973, I copied by hand into my own notebooks entries from the Durand-Ruel livres des comptes using all information for all transactions of paintings by Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, and Bazille, beginning with records for the years 1868 to 1873 and ending with the livres des comptes for 1901. The transactions for these artists were intermingled with information regarding transactions pertaining to other artists and their works that occurred during the same time period. A research assistant checked my copy work against the originals. The copy process resulted in an initial recording of thousands of entries with much duplication because of the pre-double-entry bookkeeping of the source documents. Data Coding Between 1974 and 1975, the data were transferred to optical scanning sheets and from there electronically transferred to punch cards, one transaction per card, in the same order and format as they appeared in my notebooks. The exception to this procedure was data pertaining to the names of buyers and sellers. These were copied onto index cards, placed in alphabetical order and given unique identification numbers. The index cards were then treated as a separate information file and entered onto the punch cards as unique numbers from 1 to 334. Additionally, price data were decoded and entered as numbers. An expert was presented with the list of the names of all buyers and sellers and requested to assign the names to one of two categories: French, or European-Jewish, weighting the certainty of the judgment on a scale from one to four. His categorical identifications were then checked by matches with other historical sources that make reference to and identify specific Jewish names. Finally the identification of "Jewish" names was corroborated by checking the names against a list of names that appears in L’Indicateur Israelite, a directory published by the Consistoire listing all Jews registered with them during the late nineteenth century. Through this method each name in the index card file was assigned to one of the following mutually exclusive demographic categories: 1) French Non-Jewish 2) Titled Nobility 3) Artist The Markets for Impressionist Art 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 43 Jewish U.S. Other European Museum Unknown The demographic categories were set up and employed as mutually exclusive, although a purchaser may have entertained membership in more than one category. Thus, each patron was assigned to one, and only one, category by the following decision rules: 1) French: 2) Titled Nobility: 3) Artist: 4) Jewish: 5) U.S. 6) 7) Museum: Unknown: any purchaser whose name was French in origin, and for whom no other category was believed to apply. any purchaser whose name was French in origin, not Jewish, and titled, e.g. Count Camando would be classified as Jewish. any purchaser whose name is generally associated with his or her contribution to the arts as a writer, painter, performer, composer. any purchaser whose name was identified as European Jewish. any purchaser whose name was American, and who purchased a painting from the gallery in Paris, France. All paintings shipped to Durand-Ruel’s branch gallery in New York were also placed in this category. any museum. names not identified as any of the above. Data Analysis Initially the data were sorted by computer to yield a complete listing of all sales by year of sale and all purchases by year of purchase. Because of duplications resulting from the accounting system that preceded double-entry bookkeeping, and missing data on cases, the total number of transactions was reduced to 1413 cases. The data were then sorted by year listing in clusters for each year the unique purchaser identification numbers, e.g., 1890: 1, 7, 50, 100. The number and percentage of patrons in each demographic category were tabulated and calculated for each year. Percentages were also calculated by year for the number and percentage of transactions in each demographic category. For example, in a given year, ten persons may have purchased one hundred paintings. If each person purchased ten paintings, the calculations for patrons and transactions would be identical. However, if 44 The Markets for Impressionist Art one person purchased ninety-one paintings and nine persons purchased one painting, there would be substantial differences between the calculations for the percentage of patrons and the percentage of transactions. The first set of percentages, referred to in the figures and tables as “Percentage of Patrons,” reflect calculations from the base number of patrons. The second set of percentages, referred to in the figures and tables as “Percentage of Transactions,” refers to calculations from the base number of transactions. The percentage of transactions by patron demographic categories was computed for the total period covered by the reduced data: 1890-1912. And, finally, patrons involved in fifteen or more transactions were separated and listed in a table. A second and much smaller set of data was collected for patrons of salon art between 1841 and 1899. The patrons were identified and sorted into categories using the same methodology as employed for the patrons of Impressionism. Results The results of the data analysis were startling. These are presented as figures and tables at the end of this chapter, on pages 48 to 103. Figure 1A on page 48 represents the data in Table 1A on page 49. This figure and table together display the data for all patrons between the years 1890 to 1912. The three largest demographic categories of patrons were French (Non-Jewish), Jewish, and American, which represented respectively 36%, 25%, and 16% of the total number of patrons. Together these categories encompass 77% of all patrons. Figure 1B on page 50 represents the data in Table 1B on page 51. This figure and table together display the data for all transactions between the years 1890 to 1912. Again, the three largest demographic categories were French (Non-Jewish), Jewish, and American, which represented respectively 26%, 26%, and 36% of all transactions. These data corroborate the thesis of a disproportionate Jewish patronage base, but also point to the significance of American patrons and patronage. Especially the Jewish patronage in France is stunning: Jews represented only one to three percent of the total French population (Szajkowski 1970). Figures 2 to 23, which appear on the even-numbered pages from 52 to 94, represent the transaction data for the complementary tables facing them on the odd-numbered pages, with one figure and one table for each year between 1890 and 1912. Again, the pattern is stunning. In 1890, 48% of the transactions involved French (Non-Jewish) patrons and only 3% involved Jews. 23% of the transactions involved American patrons. The pattern changes dramatically in 1894, when Americans dominate the transactions. 60% of all transactions involved Americans, whereas only The Markets for Impressionist Art 45 28% involved French (Non-Jews), and 6% Jews. The pattern changes again in 1898, the year of Zola's famous publication, J'Accuse. French patrons in that year accounted for 17% of the transactions, Americans 32%, and Jews 23%. In the following year, 1899, the year of the vote of confidence in the Waldeck-Rousseau Government, Jewish patrons accounted for 54% of the transactions. In the immediately subsequent years, 1900 and 1901, Jewish patrons accounted for 58% and 51% of the transactions respectively. The data in the years between 1902 and 1916 are less reliable since a new set of accounting records was opened in 1901. All open inventory and the related information was transferred to the new records so that the data in the 1868 to 1901 livres des comptes may distort representation in a systematic fashion. This is evident in the graphs. Graphs 1 to 4, on pages 96-99 plot the number of transactions for each of the major groups by year between 1890 and 1912, therefore offer an easy-to-read summary of the basic trends. Graph 1 displays the number of transactions involving French patrons for each year between 1890 and 1912. The French patronage reached its peak between 1892 and 1893, dropping off sharply in 1895, and then steadily declining after 1896. American patronage, displayed in Graph 2, reached a sharp peak between 1897 and 1898, and the dropped sharply. Jewish patronage, displayed in Graph 3, reached its peak between 1899 and 1901. The relative size of the three separate patronage peaks can be seen in Graph 4, which represents the total number of transactions by year for all groups. A significant proportion of the Jewish patronage was believed to result from large collectors and dealers. Figure 24 and Table 24 therefore represent an extracted subset that consists of all the number of transactions for patrons who were involved in more than fifteen transactions. This group accounted for 997 of the total 1413 transactions. Within this group, 71% of the transactions occurred between the three largest patrons: Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, and Cassirer. Finally, it might be argued that the Jewish patronage represented only the newly arrived economic status of Jews at the end of the century, and not any affinity to the newer modern style. For this reason a second smaller sample was obtained to examine patrons of the salon art, using purchasers of the works of Ingres and Flandrin between the years 1984 and 1899. The patrons were classified into the same demographic categories as the patrons of Impressionism. Figure 25 and Table 25 on pages 102 and 103 represent the results. French (Non-Jews) were the largest group, comprising 62% of the patrons. The titled nobility were the second largest group, representing 14% of the patrons. Jewish patrons represented only 3% of the total patrons of salon art. 46 The Markets for Impressionist Art The data overwhelmingly corroborate the thesis of an elective affinity between Impressionist art and Jewish art patrons, an affinity amplified by the conflict that erupted at the end of the nineteenth century over the arrest, trial, and incarceration of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The historical conditions thought to give rise to the affinity are therefore sketched out in more detail, using secondary sources. The Markets for Impressionist Art 47 48 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 1A Distribution of Patrons: 1890-1912 Unknown 13% Museum 3% French (NonJewish) 36% Other European 2% US 16% Titled Nobility 2% Jewish 25% Artist 3% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 1A Distribution of Patrons: 1890-1912 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 36 2 3 25 16 2 3 13 (173) ( 10) ( 12) (115) ( 74) ( 11) ( 12) ( 59) 100 (466) Total 49 50 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 1B Distritution of Transactions: 1890-1912 Unknown 6% Museum 2% Other European 2% French (NonJewish) 26% Titled Nobility 1% US 36% Artist 1% Jewish 26% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 1B Distribution of Transactions: 1890-1912 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 26 1 1 26 36 2 2 6 (367) ( 14) ( 14) (371) (511) ( 23) ( 24) ( 89) 100 (1413) Total 51 52 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 2 Distribution of Transactions: 1890 Unknown 20% Museum 0% Other European 0% French (NonJewish) 48% US 23% Jewish 3% Artist 0% Titled Nobility 6% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 2 1890 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 31 6 0 6 31 0 0 25 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 99 ( 16) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 48 6 0 3 23 0 0 20 ( 17) ( 2) ( 0) ( 1) ( 8) ( 0) ( 0) ( 7) 100 ( 35) Totals Totals 5) 1) 0) 1) 5) 0) 0) 4) 53 54 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 3 Distribution of Transactions: 1891 Unknown 10% Museum 0% Other European 6% French (NonJewish 44% US 30% Jewish 6% Titled Nobility 1% Artist 3% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 3 1891 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 47 3 3 9 22 6 0 9 ( 15) ( 1) ( 1) ( 3) ( 7) ( 2) ( 0) ( 3) 99 ( 32) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 44 1 3 6 30 6 0 10 ( 30) ( 1) ( 2) ( 4) ( 21) ( 4) ( 0) ( 7) 100 ( 69) Totals Totals 55 56 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 4 Distribution of Transactions: 1892 Unknown 4% Museum 2% Other European 0% US 53% French (NonJewish) 36% Titled Nobility 1% Artist 1% Jewish 3% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 4 1892 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 57 3 3 8 20 0 3 8 ( 23) ( 1) ( 1) ( 3) ( 8) ( 0) ( 1) ( 3) 100 ( 40) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 36 1 1 3 53 0 2 4 ( 44) ( 1) ( 1) ( 4) ( 65) ( 0) ( 3) ( 5) 100 (123) Totals 57 58 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 5 Distribution of Transactions: 1893 Unknown 3% Museum 9% Other European 0% French (NonJewish 48% US 26% Jewish 13% Titled Nobility 0% Artist 1% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 5 1893 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 48 0 4 16 16 0 4 12 ( 12) ( 0) ( 1) ( 4) ( 4) ( 0) ( 1) ( 3) 100 ( 25) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 48 0 1 13 26 0 9 3 ( 41) ( 0) ( 1) ( 11) ( 22) ( 0) ( 8) ( 3) 100 ( 86) Totals 59 60 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 6 Distribution of Transactions: 1894 Museum 1% Other European 0% US 60% Unknown 0% French (NonJewish) 28% Titled Nobility 3% Artist 2% Jewish 6% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 6 1894 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 47 5 10 10 21 0 5 0 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 98 ( 19) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 28 3 2 6 60 0 1 0 ( 29) ( 3) ( 2) ( 6) ( 62) ( 0) ( 1) ( 0) 100 (103) Totals Totals 9) 1) 2) 2) 4) 0) 1) 0) 61 62 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 7 Distribution of Transactions: 1895 Unknown 9% Museum 0% Other European 4% French 20% Titled Nobility 2% Artist 4% US 39% Jewish 22% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 7 1895 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 19 5 10 14 24 10 0 19 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals 100 4) 1) 2) 3) 5) 2) 0) 4) ( 21) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 20 2 4 22 39 4 0 9 ( 9) ( 1) ( 2) ( 10) ( 17) ( 2) ( 0) ( 4) 100 ( 45) Totals 63 64 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 8 Distribution of Transactions: 1896 Unknown 3% Museum 3% Other European 8% French (NonJewish) 38% US 28% Titled Nobility 3% Jewish 13% Artist 4% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 8 1896 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 30 6 9 15 21 9 3 6 ( 10) ( 2) ( 3) ( 5) ( 7) ( 3) ( 1) ( 2) 99 ( 33) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 38 3 4 13 28 8 3 3 ( 29) ( 2) ( 3) ( 10) ( 21) ( 6) ( 2) ( 2) 100 ( 75) Totals Totals 65 66 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 9 Distribution of Transactions: 1897 Unknown 3% Museum 3% Other European 8% French (NonJewish) 38% US 28% Titled Nobility 3% Jewish 13% Artist 4% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 9 1897 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 34 0 0 38 14 0 0 14 ( 10) ( 0) ( 0) ( 11) ( 4) ( 0) ( 0) ( 4) 100 ( 29) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 9 0 0 14 75 0 0 2 ( 20) ( 0) ( 0) ( 29) (160) ( 0) ( 0) ( 5) 100 (214) Totals 67 68 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 10 Distribution of Transactions: 1898 French (NonJewish) 17% Titled Nobility 0% Unknown 25% Artist 0% Museum 3% Jewish 23% Other European 0% US 32% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 10 1898 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 27 0 0 27 4 0 4 36 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 98 ( 22) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 17 0 0 23 32 0 3 25 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals Totals 100 6) 0) 0) 6) 1) 0) 1) 8) 10) 0) 0) 14) 19) 0) 2) 15) ( 60) 69 70 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 11 Distribution of Transactions: 1899 Unknown 9% Museum 0% Other European 0% French (NonJewish) 26% US 9% Titled Nobility 1% Artist 1% Jewish 54% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 11 1899 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 42 3 3 31 8 0 0 14 ( 15) ( 1) ( 1) ( 11) ( 3) ( 0) ( 0) ( 5) 100 ( 36) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 26 1 1 54 9 0 0 9 ( 22) ( 1) ( 1) ( 45) ( 8) ( 0) ( 0) ( 8) 99 ( 85) Totals 71 72 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 12 Distribution of Transactions: 1900 Unknown 1% Museum 1% Other European 5% Titled Nobility 0% French (NonJewish) 13% Artist 1% US 21% Jewish 58% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 12 1900 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 34 0 3 34 14 7 3 3 ( 10) ( 0) ( 1) ( 10) ( 4) ( 2) ( 1) ( 1) 100 ( 29) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 13 0 1 58 21 5 1 1 ( 20) ( 0) ( 2) ( 90) ( 32) ( 8) ( 2) ( 2) 99 (156) Totals 73 74 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 13 Distribution of Transactions: 1901 Unknown 3% Museum 1% Other European 0% French (NonJewish) 14% US 31% Jewish 51% Titled Nobility 0% Artist 0% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 13 1901 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 44 0 0 28 16 0 4 8 ( 11) ( 0) ( 0) ( 7) ( 4) ( 0) ( 2) ( 0) 100 ( 24) Totals Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 14 0 0 51 31 0 1 3 ( 16) ( 0) ( 0) ( 61) ( 36) ( 0) ( 1) ( 4) 100 (118) Totals 75 76 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 14 Distribution of Transactions: 1902 Unknown 7% Museum 0% Other European 4% US 14% Jewish 7% Artist 0% Titled Nobility 4% French (NonJewish) 64% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 14 1902 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 38 0 0 23 15 0 8 15 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals 100 5) 0) 0) 3) 2) 0) 1) 2) ( 13) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 64 4 0 7 14 4 0 7 ( 18) ( 1) ( 0) ( 2) ( 4) ( 1) ( 0) ( 2) 100 ( 28) Totals 77 78 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 15 Distribution of Transactions: 1903 Unknown 7% Museum 0% Other European 4% US 14% Jewish 7% Artist 0% Titled Nobility 4% French (NonJewish) 64% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 15 1903 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 50 8 0 17 8 8 0 8 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 99 ( 12) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 64 4 0 7 14 4 0 7 ( 18) ( 1) ( 0) ( 2) ( 4) ( 1) ( 0) ( 2) 100 ( 28) Totals Totals 6) 1) 0) 2) 1) 1) 0) 1) 79 80 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 16 Distribution of Transactions: 1905 Museum 7% Other European 0% US 3% Jewish 54% Unknown 0% French (NonJewish) 33% Titled Nobility 3% Artist 0% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 16 1905 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 36 7 0 43 7 0 7 0 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals 100 5) 1) 0) 6) 1) 0) 1) 0) ( 14) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 33 3 0 54 3 0 7 0 ( 10) ( 1) ( 0) ( 16) ( 1) ( 0) ( 2) ( 0) 99 ( 30) Totals 81 82 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 17 Distribution of Transactions: 1906 Unknown 5% Museum 0% Other European 0% US 14% Jewish 9% Artist 0% Titled Nobility 0% French (NonJewish) 72% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 17 1906 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 33 0 0 11 44 0 0 11 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 3) 0) 0) 1) 4) 0) 0) 1) 99 ( 9) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 72 0 0 9 14 0 0 5 ( 16) ( 0) ( 0) ( 2) ( 4) ( 0) ( 0) ( 1) 100 ( 23) Totals Totals 83 84 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 18 Distribution of Transactions: 1907 French (NonJewish) 0% Unknown 15% Titled Nobility 0% Artist 0% Jewish 31% Museum 15% Other European 0% US 39% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 18 1907 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 0 0 0 36 36 0 9 18 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 99 ( 11) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 0 0 0 31 39 0 15 15 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals Totals 100 0) 0) 0) 4) 4) 0) 1) 2) 0) 0) 0) 4) 5) 0) 2) 2) ( 13) 85 86 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 19 Distribution of Transactions: 1908 Unknown 7% Museum 0% Other European 0% French (NonJewish) 20% Titled Nobility 0% Artist 0% US 33% Jewish 40% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 19 1908 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 28 0 0 43 14 0 0 14 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 2) 0) 0) 3) 1) 0) 0) 1) 99 ( 7) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 20 0 0 40 33 0 0 7 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals Totals 100 3) 0) 0) 6) 5) 0) 0) 1) ( 15) 87 88 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 20 Distribution of Transactions: 1909 US 0% Unknown 0% French (NonMuseum Jewish) 0% Artist 7% 0% Titled Nobility 0% Other European 0% Jewish 93% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 20 1909 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 11 0 0 89 0 0 0 0 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 1) 0) 0) 8) 0) 0) 0) 0) 100 ( 9) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 7 0 0 93 0 0 0 0 ( 1) ( 0) ( 0) ( 14) ( 0) ( 0) ( 0) ( 0) 100 ( 15) Totals Totals 89 90 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 21 Distribution of Transactions: 1910 Unknown 17% Museum 0% French (NonJewish) 24% Titled Nobility 0% Other European 0% Artist 0% US 24% Jewish 35% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 21 1910 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 21 0 0 40 15 0 0 25 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals 100 4) 0) 0) 8) 3) 0) 0) 5) ( 20) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 24 0 0 35 24 0 0 17 ( 7) ( 0) ( 0) ( 10) ( 7) ( 0) ( 0) ( 5) 100 ( 29) Totals 91 92 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 22 Distribution of Transactions: 1911 Unknown 13% Museum 0% Other European 0% French (NonJewish) 9% Titled Nobility 0% Artist 0% US 22% Jewish 56% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 22 1911 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 16 0 0 50 8 0 0 25 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 99 ( 12) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 9 0 0 56 22 0 0 13 ( 2) ( 0) ( 0) ( 13) ( 5) ( 0) ( 0) ( 3) 100 ( 23) Totals Totals 2) 0) 0) 6) 1) 0) 0) 3) 93 94 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 23 Distribution of Transactions: 1912 French (NonJewish) 12% Titled Nobility 0% Unknown 27% Artist 0% Museum 2% Jewish 42% Other European 2% US 15% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 23 1912 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 22 0 0 35 4 4 4 30 ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( 99 ( 23) Transactions % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Artist Jewish US Other European Museum Unknown 12 0 0 42 15 2 2 27 ( 5) ( 0) ( 0) ( 17) ( 6) ( 1) ( 1) ( 11) 100 ( 41) Totals Totals 5) 0) 0) 8) 1) 1) 1) 7) 95 96 The Markets for Impressionist Art GRAPH 1 Transactions by Year: French 50 45 40 # of French Transactions 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 Year 1911 1909 1907 1905 1902 1900 1898 1896 1894 1892 1890 0 The Markets for Impressionist Art 97 GRAPH 2 Transactions by Year: US 180 160 140 100 80 60 40 20 Year 1911 1909 1907 1905 1902 1900 1899 1896 1894 1892 0 1890 # of US Transactions 120 98 The Markets for Impressionist Art GRAPH 3 Transactions by Year: Jewish 100 90 80 60 50 40 30 20 10 Year 1911 1909 1907 1905 1902 1900 1898 1896 1894 1892 0 1890 # of Jewish Transactions 70 The Markets for Impressionist Art 99 GRAPH 4 Transactions by Year: All 250 150 100 50 Year 1911 1909 1907 1905 1902 1900 1898 1896 1894 1892 0 1890 # of Transactions 200 100 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 24 Distribution of Transactions, Dealers and Major Patrons: 1890-1914 2% 5% 2% Museum 3% Bernheim 16% 2% Camondo Cassirer 2% Decap Depeaux 12% Durand-Ruel Paris Durand-Ruel NY 43% 4% Herbrard Montagnac 4% 5% Potter Palmer Vever The Markets for Impressionist Art 101 TABLE 24 Distribution by Purchasers More than Fifteen Transactions 1890 1894 1895 1899 1900 1904 1905 1909 1910 1914 Purchaser Total Museum 12 6 6 5 2 31 1 59 77 16 3 156 13 6 4 0 1 24 0 9 75 9 29 122 Decap 15 15 6 0 0 36 Depeaux 21 21 0 0 0 42 Durand-Ruel, Paris 42 0 11 0 0 53 92 213 73 9 32 419 0 0 2 20 0 22 Montagnac 12 2 0 2 0 16 Potter Palmer 48 3 2 0 0 53 Vever 23 0 0 0 0 23 Total 279 334 256 56 67 997 Bernheim & Petit) Bernheim, J.) Bernheim, fils) Bernheim) Total Camondo Cassirer Durand-Ruel, New York) US Branch) Total Herbrard 102 The Markets for Impressionist Art FIGURE 25 Patrons of Salon Art: 1841-1899 Unknown 16% Other European 5% US 0% Jewish 3% Titled Nobility 14% French (NonJewish) 62% The Markets for Impressionist Art TABLE 25 Patrons of Salon Art: 1841-1899 Patrons % N French (Non-Jewish) Titled Nobility Jewish US Other European Unknown 62 14 3 0 5 16 ( ( ( ( ( ( Totals 100 5) 0) 8) 0) 1) 7) ( 23) 103 104 The Markets for Impressionist Art Chapter 5 ________________________________ The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists Et Dreyfus n’est qu’un pretexte au grand combat des idées (Severine). The Case of Alfred Dreyfus “Few fictional whodunits are more complex than this real-life case of alleged treason,” writes Gordon Wright (1966) in reference to the case of Alfred Dreyfus, who was court-martialed as a suspect for treason on October 15, 1894. The mystery and intrigue naturally surrounding a case so complex may have contributed to its escalation into what became known as “the Affair.” But the translation of the plight of one man, Dreyfus, into a sequence of events, which threatened the very foundations of the Third Republic of France, was the work of an active and liberal press. And the news of Dreyfus’s arrest first reached the public via Drumont’s La Libre Parole on October 29, 1894: “Is it true that recently a highly important arrest has been made by order of military authorities? The person arrested seems to be accused of espionage. If the information is true, why do the military authorities maintain complete silence?” 106 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists The crime that Dreyfus was alleged to have committed was inferred from a letter, known as the bordereau, which contained a list of documents that its author intended to sell to the German Military Attachée, Colonel von Schwartzkoppen. Modern historians generally agree that the author of the incriminating document was a Major Esterhazy. Either an Embassy maid or an agent, reputedly, turned over the bordereau, to Major Henry of the French War Office on September 26, 1894. In their search for its author, French counter-espionage agents came across Alfred Dreyfus and pointed the finger. Rumor has it that the information regarding the arrest was released to Drumont by Major Henry thereby making its way into La Libre Parole. At the time of the arrest, there was very little evidence linking Dreyfus to the crime. Moreover, Dreyfus was Alsatian and independently wealthy by birth, hence, had very little motive to commit high treason. Given this, historians often argue that the matter may have been dropped with no formal charges had it not been for the premature news release in an anti-Semitic press. As it was, Dreyfus was tried, in camera, in December and convicted on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence. He was sentenced to forfeiture of his military rank, degradation and deportation to a fortified place for life. The degradation ceremony was held in the court of the École Militaire on January 5, 1895. Throughout the ceremony, Dreyfus called out: --Je suis innocent! Je jure que je suis innocent! Vive la France! --On degrade un innocent! --Sur la tête de ma femme et mes enfants, je jure que je suis innocent! (Boussel, 1960: 77). Dreyfus was held in the Santé between January 5 and January 18, 1895. On January 18, he was transported in irons to La Rochelle, where he barely escaped a bloodthirsty crowd. From La Rochelle, he was taken to Ile de Ré, where he is reported to have been the target of unusually brutal treatment by the prison head. On February 21, 1895, Dreyfus was taken by ship to Devil’s Island, off the coast of Cayenne. Formerly a colony for lepers, Devil’s Island was one of three islands designated for the detention of political prisoners and had been especially cleared for Dreyfus (Chapman 1955). After the final imprisonment of Dreyfus, military secrets continued to flow to the German Embassy. Within the French War Office, after a few political dust storms, the new chief of the Statistical Section, Lt. Colonel Picquart, derived from hearsay that, even with the secret documents in the Dreyfus file, the case was inconclusive. But it was more his suspicion of complicity than his belief in the innocence of Dreyfus which The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 107 led Picquart to re-examine the Dreyfus file. Nevertheless, the fact that Picquart came to believe in Dreyfus’s wrongful conviction contributed to a decision within the War Office, which resulted in his, Picquart’s, transfer to a post in the Tunisian desert on December 12, 1896. Picquart also suspected Esterhazy. The turning point in the Dreyfus case came late in 1898, when some forgeries by Henry were discovered and identified in the Dreyfus file. Henry confessed to these on August 30, 1898 and committed suicide on the next day. Esterhazy, also implicated, fled to Belgium. Thus, a new trial could no longer be averted. On June 9, 1899, Dreyfus was brought back from Devil’s Island. The second court-martial proceedings began on August 7 at Rennes, and, on September 9, Dreyfus was again found guilty of treason. He was pardoned ten days later, however, by Prime Minister Waldeck-Rousseau. Dreyfus was vindicated in civil court on July 12, 1906, twelve years after his arrest. He was reinstated in the Army through a bill passed by Parliament three days after the conclusion of the Appeals Court trial and was later decorated with the Légion d’Honneur (cf. Chapman 1955). The brief summary of events presented above is absurd owing to the paucity of detail. Indeed, Chapman opens his great work on the Dreyfus Case with this quote from Maulnier: “Fanaticism begins at the point where evidence stops short.” But the case became the Affair, and the Affair a legend, as much through the highlighting of irrelevant detail in “stories” which appeared in the press as through relevant omissions. And it is the task of this chapter to reveal how such factual “gerrymanderings” became linked to interest in the Affair and its resolution, without the facile explanation of conspiracy, as alleged by propagandists on both sides. Again, the Affair illustrates the influence of propaganda on history. Nine-tenths of the literature of the case is Dreyfusard; the Dreyfusard view, with its crude blacks and whites, has passed into history. The anti-Dreyfusard versions, such as they are, are no less propagandist, but since their side was defeated, the writers have been ineffective. Both versions are distorted. It is only by examining the case in detail that a picture emerges, not of virtue at grips with villainy, but of fallible human beings pulled this way and that by their beliefs, their loyalties, their prejudices, their ambitions, and their ignorance. ‘Rien ne vit que par le detail’ (Chapman 1955: 360). Chapman’s shrewd comments aside, for all the human foibles on both sides of the Affair, from a modern perspective the outcome of the events must be viewed as a victory of reason over medievalism. And the contribution of humanist intellectuals, even though they may have entered the political arena with individual aspirations for center stage, 108 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists should not be underestimated, in determining the course of the Affair (cf. Coser 1965). Escalation of the Affair In the early eighteen-nineties France was not a happy country. For more than a decade the depression of trade which had hung over Europe had affected the French no less than Great Britain and Germany. There were falling prices, falling rents, unemployment, hunger in many towns, suicides. The phylloxera scourge was still marching through the vineyards, and where it had passed, replanting was on a smaller scale. There had been bad financial crashes which had hampered government finance – the Union Générale crisis of 1882, the Comptoir d’Escompte crisis of March 1889, the Panama Company crisis in February of the same year. Since trade unions, legalized only in 1884, were still weak and almost wholly local, since the majority of the industrial workers were confined to a few big cities – apart from Paris, only ten towns possessed a population of more than a hundred thousand – and of the industrial workers most were employees in small workshops, nothing was done to relieve distress. Hitherto only a few deeply religious Catholics had taken any interest in the social question, and that from the viewpoint of morals rather than of economics. Ministers had allowed themselves to be dominated by the financial pangloss, Leon Say: they denied the possibility of remedies for unemployment, even of palliatives for distress, and left the problem to their successors. Hence came the first beginnings of socialism, on the one side from a few Radical Deputies, some of them union secretaries from the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, the Montlucon iron-works, the soap and vegetable-oil factories of Marseilles and, outside the Chamber of Deputies, from such theoretical revolutionaries as Jules Guesde, the ‘Torquemada in spectacles’ and apostle of Karl Marx. At the same time, more sympathetic to the hungry casual workmen, who abounded in Paris, there appeared the Anarchists, relying on the ‘unquenchable spirit of destruction and annihilation, which is the perpetual revival of new life’. From March 1892 onwards, bombs thrown into restaurants or left in buildings brought home the fact that there existed a problem for society to solve (Chapman 1955: 11-12). It is difficult to grasp the context, thus, how and why the Dreyfus incident touched off the political ramifications it did on the French political scene. One can only surmise from the sequence of events through which the case of Alfred Dreyfus unfolded onto France that it uncovered real legal flaws in the Constitution and real enemies to the Third Republic of France. For by 1898, partisanship had centered on the The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 109 case from the most peculiar of political standpoints, with animosity unleashed and expressed through violence at an incidence approximate to that which had characterized the Commune. And, everyone in France seemed to be either for or against the case of Alfred Dreyfus. On the simplest level, the Dreyfus Affair was set in motion by Mathieu Dreyfus who, believing in the innocence of his brother, took steps to secure a more fair trial. But in his efforts to obtain justice, he stumbled across the obstacles of a corrupt Republic and two implacable foes – the authority of the Army and the Church, and public ignorance. In brief, the Dreyfusist cause threatened to bring down a somewhat degenerate state of affairs, from which many were profiting. It is for this reason, perhaps, that partisan lines tied to the cause often appear complex and baffling. For in many cases, the stated causes for action were no more than pretensions for individuals embroiled in old personal and political hatreds and struggles endogenous to nascent party politics, which, if imperfect in their mature form, seemed during this period inclined to their own extinction by the ascension of goals over means. Evidence of corruption was present even before the escalation of the Affair. By 1894, the year in which Dreyfus was arrested, Republicans had found their positions to be seriously compromised by, especially, the financial scandals which had implicated Parliamentary Deputies, the real social problems of the urban poor, untimely incidents of anarchist violence, a struggle with the clergy over the implementation of the laïc laws (for secularizing and expanding public education), a constitution with loopholes which stemmed from its Monarchist committee origins and press laws which fostered defamation by making sanction an unlikely event. In this context, the cause for the revision of the courtmartialing decision against Dreyfus seemed to do little more than draw out already present venom. The Dreyfusists Until 1898, the strategies of the Dreyfus family and the small handful of idealists who sympathized with their efforts to secure justice for Alfred – Joseph Reinach, Bernard Lazare, Marcel Proust, the Halévy brothers, Léon Blum, and the circles around Mme. Caillavet and Mme. Strauss – were cautious. On the one hand, Mathieu Dreyfus had specifically engaged the services of symbolist writer Bernard Lazare, “celebrated defender of anarchists and revolutionaries” (Marrus 1971), to develop public opinion sympathetic to the case. But, on the other, he severely hampered Lazare’s expression by prudently delaying publication of his work, while he continued to pull strings and knock on doors 110 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists (Marrus 1971). “The family conducted itself with considerable caution, and held back in every possible way from making the case a cause célébre” (Marrus 1971: 215). Hannah Arendt suggests that “in trying to save an innocent man they employed the very methods unusually adopted in the case of a guilty one. They stood in mortal terror of publicity and relied exclusively on back-door maneuvers” (Arendt 1958: 105). Much of the initial Dreyfusist strategy may have stemmed from ignorance, as it is unlikely that any but the tiniest minority had any real grasp of the issues or what would be entailed in bringing about a fair trial for Dreyfus. In retrospect, it is, of course, easier to see that securing justice would require: (1) the development of a political movement, (2) legislation limiting the hostile activities of opponents, (3) legislation separating Church and State and (4) an official decision establishing the right of Dreyfus to a civil trial. But these factors became obvious only as the case for revision unfolded through the organized opposition to the Dreyfusist cause, most of which had little to do with the guilt versus innocence of Dreyfus. The Anti-Dreyfusists One theme which surfaced as a recognizable force in opposition to the case for revision of the 1894 verdict on Dreyfus, and which defies comprehension, was modern anti-Semitism. This went beyond caricatures, emphasizing the ethnic features of Jewish figures, cast for the news, journal or novel-reading public. At strategic moments in the Affair, especially when Émile Zola the still detested novelist published J’Accuse in Clémenceau’s L’Aurore in 1898, anti-Semitic riots broke out in Paris, Nantes, Nancy, Rennes – nearly every major city in France (Marrus 1971). Jews were assaulted, their stores sacked, and their synagogues raided (Marrus 1971). “A vague odour of coup d’etat and of Saint Barthélemy hung in the air,” wrote Theodore Reinach (1904) after the Affair. It is highly unlikely that the Dreyfus’s religion was objectively related to a propensity for treason. Like most French Jews at the end of the nineteenth century, Dreyfus was highly assimilated and acceptant of the economic and social goals of his native France. It is also unlikely that anti-Semitism played much of a role in the internal dynamics of the case for prosecution and, later, for deterring revision within the War Office, in spite of the shadow of doubt cast on the incident by the allegations that Henry had leaked the story to La Libre Parole through Drumont. In fact, it is rumored that within the War Office, it was Picquart, who eventually questioned the weight of evidence in the “secret file,” who probably entertained the most prejudice against Jews; clearly, The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 111 this had not affected his capacity for judgment. Reports that efforts on the part of the War Office to pin down the Dreyfus Case included scouring brothels for rumors (Chapman 1955) seem scarcely worth mentioning in this context, as do the reports that rumors were founded. What is most pertinent, it seems, is why the equation between the religious training of Dreyfus and his alleged crime was ever made and how it became organized into public reaction against the revisionist cause. Amidst the confusing turmoil of violence and nascent party politics, five factors stand out as special contributors to the ease with which an organized political movement which fed off anti-Semitism could be developed in France during the 1890’s: (1) a tradition of assimilation which required the shedding of ethnic characteristics prior to full social participation, (2) economic hardships and the financial scandals of the late 1880’s and early 1890’s, (3) conflict stemming from the implementation of the laïc laws and their implicit contradiction to the Concordat signed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801 and with the Law Falloux of 1850, (4) immigration and (5) the liberal press laws in conjunction with the personal venom of E. Drumont. Assimilation. The problems associated with “the Jewish Question,” as it was referred to, had their origins in the legislation regarding the emancipation of Jews and other parties in the Third Estate, which accompanied the Revolution of 1789. In the debates preceding the Revolution, even though a number of the philosophes, most notably Voltaire, entertained an anti-Semitic prejudice which hampered a clean break between Enlightenment philosophy and Christian ethics, it was agreed that the exclusion of Jews from the “new society” opposed the principles of Reason. The majority of les philosophes sincerely believed that it was their moral duty to extend equality to all men and that even Jews would be regenerated by the new order…The economic thrust of the Revolution was towards the creation of a modern economy, and it was impossible to maintain regulations and exclusions from an earlier time and apply them only to Jews (Hertzberg 1968: 307). Thus, the legislation for emancipation that followed the Revolution applied specifically to Jews, although the French State failed to maintain its autonomy from the Catholic Church. And this twist, which became official in 1801, when Napoleon signed the Concordat with the Pope, created special problems in the assimilation of Jews throughout the nineteenth century. 112 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists By conceding citizenship to Jews, the state did not immediately resolve all problems with regard to the Jews. It might have gone a longer way toward doing so if the concession to the Jews had followed on the acceptance of the principle of separating church and state. On the basis of this principle the state could have ignored the religion of its citizens and the Jews would have been left to their own devices, to maintain their religious institutions or not, as they wished (Katz 1973: 171). Initially, the State had divested itself of all interests in religious matters, while at the same time guaranteeing the right of worship. During the Reign of Terror, however, all religions were proscribed and worshippers of all faiths were persecuted (Katz 1973). This state of affairs was maintained until the Reign of Terror came to an end, and “the cooperation of state and church was again the order of the day” (Katz 1973: 173). Implicit in the legislation for the emancipation of Jews was an assumption that their assimilation into French society would follow naturally from the integrative processes of society and that, as a consequence of their more intimate association with the predominantly Catholic culture, Jews would become indistinguishable from Gentiles. And in fact, throughout the nineteenth century, an approximation of such a pattern of integration was closely linked to liberal political forms and industrial development if it was characterized by some concentration of Jews in the liberal professions and trade, a continued pattern of geographic concentration and a vague hint of anti-Semitism on the part of assimilated Jews toward their more ethnic co-religionists. But, especially with the economic crisis of the 1870’s and 1880’s, when “the very norms of the liberal system came to be widely repudiated” (Rurup 1969: 68), Jewish emancipation as part of this system was subject to the same duress. Economic Hardships. The real fiscal problems in France stemmed from her relatively slow industrialization. This process, initially, had been retarded by geographic features in the land and other, more social obstacles, which created unusual mechanical problems in the flow of goods ordinarily associated with a modern economy (cf. Landes 1969). These same features in the land fostered wide “horizontal and vertical fissures” (Landes 1969) in the population, which, along with a low rate of population growth, hampered the development of demand for manufactured goods, in addition to the impediments to supply. Moreover, a cultural preference for small, family businesses and a noble prejudice against banking and enterprise made the initial consolidation and mobilization of capital first, problematic, and second, a domain often left to the initiative of non-French-Catholic entrepreneurs. Hence, France The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 113 remained a relatively underdeveloped country (although in a qualitatively different sense than a modern use of the term ordinarily connotes) with a predominantly rural and tradition-bound population providing sharp contrasts to city life up to the twentieth century. In 1896, 45% of the French population was still engaged in agriculture, and 80% still resided in the department in which they were born (Chapman 1962). By contrast, in Seine, the department of Paris, two-thirds of the population was immigrants. If the economy had picked up under Napoleon III, this was a temporary state of affairs, at least in terms of the rate of growth, for the war of 1870 was followed by twenty years of deflation and depression. And even after 1896, when the depression lifted, France lagged behind the United Kingdom, the Unites States and Germany on most indices of economic development. The economic depression had nothing to do with the financial practices of French Jews, although the latter formed approximately onetenth of those in high finance (Chapman 1962). But two events fostered a projected equation of responsibility: the crash of the Union Générale and the Panama Scandal. Émile Bontoux founded the Union Générale, a Lyon finance house, in 1878 during a financial boom, which resulted from governmental intervention and assistance on the construction of the “second network” of railways. Bontoux had been a Monarchist Deputy and marketed the Union as a Catholic corporation selling shares to the “faithful,” who were often uneducated, illiterate, rural peasants. When the Union crashed in 1882, owing in part to illegal activities on the part of its directors and in part to the superior banking strategies of the more conservative Rothschild house, Bontoux unleashed a verbal attack on “Jewish haute finance.” For what it was worth, Bontoux was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for selling phony shares (cf. Chapman 1962). The propensity to associate financial problems with a “Jewish syndicate” was further aggravated by the Panama Scandal, which came before a magistrate in 1891. Misguided from the beginning, La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama attempted to obtain funds by a lottery loan in 1888. This required an approval from Parliament, unlikely, given the company’s already staggering debts and the refusal of the director to heed the advice of national engineers. However, two Jewish promoters, Jacques de Reinach and Cornelius Herz, apparently bribed and blackmailed a number of Deputies, while the Prime Minister took 300,000 francs from the Panama Company to fight the Boulangist movement (Chapman 1955). The judicial intervention resulted in, at best, a complete whitewash, but Herz and Reinach, quarreling amongst themselves, began feeding information to Drumont’s newly forming anti-Semitic press, presumably in the hopes of buying 114 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists individual immunity from his attacks. Drumont, who had already revealed his hatred for specific Jewish financial magnates in La France Juive, exposed the Panama Scandal in La Derniére Bataille. Both books met with immense success. Laïc Laws. The Law Falloux, passed on March 15, 1850, was aimed at breaking the growing secular power in universities and subordinating all education to the “great organs of society” (Chapman 1962). In 1880, under a Republican campaign, conflicting legislation aimed at secularizing and expanding public education and expelling the Catholic orders from the teaching profession was instituted. However, implementation of the laïc laws, if not scotched by clergy politics, presented insurmountable technical problems, not the least important being an insufficient number of teachers to fill posts. Thus, throughout the eighties and nineties, “guerilla war between the anti-clericals and the clergy dragged on in a spirit of nagging intolerance” (Chapman 1955: 20). Surprisingly, perhaps, the Jewish community was moderate in its official statements regarding the plan. First, the Consistoire, like the Catholic orders, received financial assistance from the government, which would be quashed by real implementation of the laïc laws. Second, many members of the Jewish community expressed fears that the conflict over secularization of education, but especially over separation of church and state, would stir up hatred against the Jews. And finally, much of the impetus for the anti-clerical movement came from the Radical left, a faction with a longstanding tradition of antiSemitism in French politics, stemming from polemic associations between Jews and capitalism. As phrased by an editorial in Archives Israelites: If clericalism in its worst sense, the interference of the priests in politics, is the enemy, we can say even more correctly that liberalism, the scrupulous respect for beliefs, the sincere and honest guarantee of the sacred rights of conscience, voilà l’ami (cited by Marrus 1971: 134). Immigration. In 1881, the assassination of Alexander II in Russia by the Black Septembrist partition of the Populists touched off a wave of anti-Jewish measures and, eventually, pogroms in the Russian Empire. As a consequence, approximately 200,000 Eastern European Jews immigrated to France. Rather than political protest against the measures taken by Alexander III, the wave of unfortunate immigrants provoked ethnic stereotypes and “seemed to confirm the validity of caricatures presented in La Libre Parole (Marrus 1971: 162).” These Eastern European Jews “bore very little in common” with the assimilated French The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 115 Jews, many of whom appear to have accepted the anti-Semitism implicit in the assimilation model, as evidenced by their embarrassment at the pronounced ethnic characteristics and tradition-bound mores of these recent immigrants to France. Press Laws. Under the censorship of the Second Empire, journalists had developed special methods “of distilling the subtle venom, which superficially appeared innocent” (Chapman 1955: 25). Once freed from the constraints of censorship by the Pres Law of 1881, editors and journalists unleashed a wide range of bitter polemical denunciations from a wide range of political perspectives. The vital clause in the legislation placed defamation actions subject to sanction through trial by juries, typically constituted of small shopkeepers and artisans, who were often easily bought off (Chapman 1955). Onto this scene came “a newcomer with as ready and as bitter a pen as Rochefort’s, and what Rochefort had never possessed, a creed” (Chapman 1955: 26). Drumont, a former employee of Isaac Pereire, used writing to vindicate his hatred for the Jewish financier – “the Rothschilds, the Ephrussi, the Bambergers, the Cahens d’Anvers, the finance capitalists – whom he hated, with a fury as deep as Lenin, for having destroyed what he believed to be the ancient French virtues and values” (Chapman 1955: 28). Drumont went further than founding an anti-Semitic press. In 1889, with the aid of the Marquis de Mores, He founded the Anti-Semitic League, composed largely of youths from the slaughterhouses of La Villette. In April 1892, having made a great deal of money he launched an anti-Semitic daily paper, the Libre Parole. Within a month, as a result of his attacks on Jewish officers in the Army, there took place a number of widely publicized duels, in one of which Mores killed a Jewish officer, Captain Mayer, by means believed to be despicably unfair (Chapman 1955: 29). After the death of Mores in 1896, the Anti-Semitic League fell into the hands of Jules-Napoléon Guérin. Drumont was present with his pen at every event in the Dreyfus Affair. On November 1, 1894, the headline of La Libre Parole read: “High Treason. Arrest of Jewish Officer, A. Dreyfus,” with a story of proof against the accused, but adding that “the case will be hushed up because the officer is a Jew…He will be allowed to find a shelter at Mulhouse, where his family resides” (Drumont 1894). Writes Chapman, “At once the rest of the press was on the hunt: Matin, Journal, Petit Journal, and all others, all had versions of the Libre Parole statements” (Chapman 1955: 79). At the Zola trial in 1898, Drumont denounced one 116 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists of the jury members, discovered to be one of the Rothschild’s tradesmen, as being in the pay of “the Jews.” An Anti-Dreyfusist Conspiracy? There is no evidence to support a clericomilitary conspiracy in the course of the Dreyfus Affair. While Pope Leo XIII had entrusted the task of propaganda to the Assumptionists in 1883, this group broke away from the Vatican policy of Ralliement and became so violent as to evoke the hatreds that they were supposed to allay. The police moved into the headquarters of their press, La Croix, in November of 1899. In January of 1900 the brotherhood was dissolved by court order and their paper taken over by a lay company (Chapman 1955). There is also little evidence, save the coincidence of acquaintance between Esterhazy, Henry and Drumont, to suggest complicity between the Army and the anti-Semitic press. But it was against the defamation and violence of organized anti-Semitism, the logic of implicated Army officials, the corruption of republican politics in the 1890’s and the mysticism and ignorance of the people, that the Dreyfusist cause arose. The Dreyfus Affair Between 1894 and 1898, Mathieu and the small group of friends and sympathizers who surrounded his cause worked quietly with the services of attorney Edgar Demange, recommended to the Dreyfus family by Waldeck-Rousseau. However, when Zola thundered forth with J’Accuse in 1898, the Dreyfusist campaign became public. Much of the Affair took place in heated parlour discussions, often on the backsteps, between Parliamentary Deputies, Army officials, even the Presidents and Ministers of the Republic, and often on the streets. But between 1898 and 1899, the marshalling of opinions for or against Dreyfus resulted in two political camps. On the one side the forces of the right attempted to mobilize opinion in defense of certain representatives of social authority, such as the Army, the Church, and the judicial system, which they considered essential for the preservation of a threatened society. On the other side the aristocratie républicaine, the solid middle class defenders of the Third Republic, were similarly devoted to the maintenance of established French institutions and the social peace for which they stood. These two sides, which had so much in common, did not oppose one another until the The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 117 activity of a vociferous but tiny minority precipitated a crisis (Marrus 1971). It was difficult to predict which side a given individual might take in the Affair, since the lines of action were often unclear. Basically, the Dreyfusards came to stand for reason, for the guiding principles of the Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789, and against mysticism, antiSemitism, and the preservation of social order, when the latter was placed above all else. But the Dreyfusards achieved a concrete political victory through the moderate Left-wing coalition, which brought WaldeckRousseau to the office of Prime Minister in June of 1899. Waldeck pardoned Dreyfus from the second Army verdict at Rennes, although the Dreyfusards criticized him for delaying this matter unnecessarily. The Dreyfusard Intellectuals It is not especially surprising that most of the great thinkers, writers and artists of the period allied themselves with the Dreyfusard camp, although there are notable exceptions to this rule of thumb. Writes Hughes in his study of intellectuals during the period: When in the late 1890’s in the tumults of the Dreyfus case, the very existence of the Republic seemed threatened, they (the French protagonists in his study) all rallied to its defense. It may be objected in this connection that at the turn of the century royalism and other forms of anti-republic activity were fashionable in French literary circles: in the Dreyfus case the intellectuals were almost evenly divided…But the antiDreyfusard writers were in general those of lesser rank…The great and sensitive minds in the field of social thought were without exception Dreyfusards (Hughes 1958: 56-57). Many intellectuals who aligned with the Dreyfusard camp did so only after the cause surfaced as the Affair. But others “cast their lot from the very outset…with the revisionists” (Herbert 1961: 202) – Merrill, Kahn, Herold, Quillard, Monet, Tailhade, Ghil, Adam, Fénéon, Rette, Mauclair, Geffroy, Ajalbert, Richepin, Rictus, Mirbeau, Descaves, Signac, Pissarro, Luce, Ibels, Valloton, Steinlen (Herbert 1961), Lazare, Proust, the Halévy brothers, and Blum (Chapman 1955). Some, such as Zola, used the Affair to provoke issues onto a public forum; others formed the staff of Clémenceau’s L’Aurore, or worked for the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme. So strong, in fact, was the association of artists, writers, and intellectuals that, as Ibels commented: “intellectual became the synonym 118 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists for antipatriot, informer, spy, traitor, agent of the ‘syndicate’ – as if there had been a syndicate rich enough to buy all these consciences” (Ibels 1898: 96). The Jewish Community and the Affair Throughout the course of the Dreyfus Affair, French Jews quietly affirmed their allegiance to the Third Republic and their commitment to the political strategy of assimilation (Marrus 1971). The seeming neutrality of the “Jewish community” was criticized by many of the proponents of revision, such as Léon Blum, who, in 1935, wrote: “The rich Jews, the middle bourgeoisie, the Jewish public servants, were afraid of the fight…they thought only of going to ground and hiding” (Blum 1935: 24-25). This evaluation of the perspective taken by members of the Jewish community departs somewhat from that of Marrus (1971), in his more recent analysis of the Jewish community during the Affair. French Jews faced this time of upheaval with a degree of confidence not evident elsewhere among the Jews of Europe. They aligned themselves with the traditions of the French Revolution, articulated a general political perspective that glorified their association with the Third Republic, and expected that they would be safe. Their political theory and their political strategy was that of assimilation. Their approach to a world of change was to accentuate their identification with France, and to prove by their patriotism that they were worthy of respect (Marrus 1971: 85). Marrus argues that by the time of the Affair, a generation of Jewish thinkers and historians in France had prepared articulate statements which provided French Jews with ideals harmonious with both their religion and the Third Republic. James Darmester, for example, argued that “there was no longer any place for the traditional Jewish opposition to the established order…The Jew could embrace France because France had risen to that higher level of humanity which it had been the task of Judaism to propagate…Darmester showed explicitly how the ideology of the French Revolution was in fact the ideology of Judaism. The Revolution represented, in the ideological sphere, the substitution of a scientific conception of the world for a mythical conception; in the practical sphere it represented the institutionalization of the notions of justice and progress” (Marrus 1971: 105-106). This notwithstanding, the passivity of the Jewish community may well be overestimated. The small, vociferous minority that initially The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists 119 aligned itself with the Dreyfusist cause, while drawn from the circle of friends around the family, was well enough represented by Jews. And it was Lazare, the professional writer of the Dreyfusist cause, who went on to an articulate profession of Zionism. In fact, the Affair provoked a barely perceptible shift in the political orientation of the Jewish community, with the result that most Jews thereafter adopted a middleground strategy between the extremes of assimilation and Zionism – accommodation, a natural complement to pluralism. The Elective Affinity between the Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusist Cause The growing affinity between European Jews in France and Impressionist as modern art, in conjunction with the events in the Dreyfus Affair as evidenced in Chapter 4, can be explained through Weber’s concept of elective affinity. For Weber, there was rarely ever a close correspondence between the contents of an idea and the interests of those who followed it from the first moment. Ideas, for Weber, could not be understood as reflections of social processes, as “superstructure,” even though thought is closely related to social context. In contrast to the passive role assigned to ideas, implicitly, by the concept of “superstructure,” Weber hinged the survival of an idea on its capacity to find a social group to become its carrier. From this perspective, ideas provide a spiritual or ideological justification for the material interests of their audience. Such “elective affinity” between a social grouping and a specific set of ideas typically involves a convergence of the social and psychological needs of a people and a situation of institutional failure. Hence, the combination of the appropriate style with propitious socio-historical circumstances produces a “perceptual reaction” which suggests direction, consonant with material interests in the audience, while simultaneously affecting the broader interpretation of the idea by the association. Ideas and interests, so to speak, seek each other out in history; neither can survive without the other. Implicit in the notion of elective affinity as described is the independence of creation and acceptance, and a dependence of interpretation on the historical circumstance and precise interests of the specific audience. In brief, it can be argued that the conflict between the Neo-Classical and Impressionist worldviews came to material fruition during the course of the Dreyfus Affair. French Jews increasingly saw in Impressionist art an ideological justification for their affirmation of allegiance to the Third 120 The Impressionist Movement and the Dreyfusists Republic. And they reached out to help it along as a consequence of their real and material interests. But what is most critical from this viewpoint with regard to the acceptance of Impressionist art is that the Dreyfusards won a political victory. Given this, it is not surprising that the Impressionist paintings were given a special place in the International Exposition of 1900, much to the chagrin of the anti-Dreyfusard painter Gerôme for example, who protested by trying to prevent the President of the Republic from entering the exhibition. Chapter 6 ________________________________ Conclusion …if a person was called a French, English, or German Jew, he was taken to belong in some way to both the social units implied in the compound expression: he belonged to one of the nations and was, in addition a Jew (Katz 1973: 1). The correspondence between the Impressionist movement and the Dreyfusist cause in France at the turn of the century stems from their common association with the ideals of a secular, pluralistic, and democratic republic, in the abstract, and their material dependence on the fate of the third Republic, concretely. This was largely independent of the political dispositions of the painters, who, like Degas and Manet, may have been right wing, although most of the original Batignolles group, in their mature years, and nearly all of their younger followers and critics, provided a strong endorsement of the Dreyfusist cause and republican political goals. But the frequently leftist dispositions amongst the artists and their circles of friends were more an accessory than a primary cause for the association of the style with the campaign to free Dreyfus. The Impressionist style itself, rooted as it was in the Academic tradition of landscape painting, was only suggestive of a political outlook, especially in 1874. But, that the artists began their careers 122 Conclusion outside of the French Academy, in unorthodox ateliers – that they worked together, from the Café Guérbois, to develop a campaign for structural innovation in the art world – that they expressed contempt for official style and procedures, aligned their cause with “that which opposed” artistic convention. Because the Academy, as an appendage of the State, was empowered to grant official status to its preferred artists and style, the Neo-Classical represented more than a set of artistic conventions – it was the emblem of a moral, social, and political order. Moreover, both the Academy and its official style were grounded in a specifically French cultural tradition. Hence, the Impressionist style could only be interpreted as iconoclastic, and the strategies of its artists as subversive to the traditional order. It may be considered ironic, given the explicit intentions of its founders to wrest the arts from guild, or ecclesiastical, control, that the educational institutions of which the Academy of Painting was a part during the nineteenth century, became the most powerful vehicle in binding the ideals of the State to a Roman Catholic heritage. However, the Revolution had failed to effect a separation between church and state. Once the terror abated, Catholicism again became the order of the day, and the prestigious and centralized institutions for education provided an efficient means through which Christian philosophies might be disseminated. Under the Second Empire in particular, when legitimization was a crucial problem, the entire nexus of educational institutions was subject to the authority of a religious board. Hence, as was the case under the ancien régime, Christianity provided a cohesive moral force, which justified the social order and linked a ruptured nation to a solid past. The sublime influence of this Christian heritage on French culture, but especially its foothold in the educational institutions, created four obstacles to the creation of a republican state: (1) It provided moral justification for the isolation of the bourgeoisie from the problems posed by an expanding class of urban poor, because it obscured the economic source of class differences. Under the moral umbrella of Catholicism, these social “evils” could be viewed as symptomatic of spiritual deprivation. (2) By placing erudition in classical Christian thought and forms on a plane above technological skills, France as a nation, was rendered dependent upon England in particular for the dissemination of science and technology in the industrialization process. Hence, the official institutions for education, at least the most prestigious ones, remained largely aloof, if not antagonistic, to modernization. (3) It fortified an educational model more appropriate to the ancien régime with “knowledge,” an exclusive preserve open to a chosen few. This impeded the expansion of even literacy, a necessary condition for the Conclusion 123 construction of a republican democracy. (4) It obscured the individual locus of moral conviction by suggesting one eternally valid set of religious truths. This precluded pluralism, and led to confusion between vice and crime. Thus, it is not especially surprising that the secularization of public instruction and its expansion became the strategy for attack by Republicans when they gained a majority position in the Third Republic in 1880. It was only against this background that the aesthetic revolution of Impressionism assumed political meaning. In contrast to the traditionbound illusion of Neo-Classicism, the Impressionists emphasized mundane reality and the conscious intervention of the subjective point of view, which was not a constant for even one individual across time – witness Monet’s series of the Cathedral at Rouen. In contrast to the exclusive world of order, portrayed through the fini of the Neo-Classical style, the Impressionists revealed the chaos of a changing world through “unfinished” paintings. Thus, even though the intentions of the artists were not specifically political, the movement, which began with the Third Republic, offered a cogent aesthetic alternative to the official style – it offered an illusion harmonious with the goals of a secular, republican state. And these features became increasingly explicit via the works and writings of the Impressionist followers. It may also be considered ironic, given the increasingly leftist dispositions among the Post-Impressionist painters and critics, that the new style found its public through a capitalistic system – private enterprise between dealers. But, it was only through privatization that pluralism in the arts became possible. And, it was only through the shrewd investments of a few that the paintings survived the economic depression of the early years of the Third Republic for resale at a more propitious time. But perhaps more important, the rise of modern democracies in general throughout Western Europe was associated with the rise of capitalism; hence, that this form of organization ushered in “democratic art” parallels a broader trend. It may be argued that the marketing strategies of the dealers, especially the overture of Durand-Ruel onto the American market, created an illusory association between Impressionism and republican political forms. However, democratization, industrialization, modernization and urbanization were ongoing, empirically verifiable, trends, characteristic of nineteenth century France. That these trends were reflected in the themes of high-quality, non-Academic art, beginning with the Barbizons – that the new aesthetic was linked to the material trends, that it was recognized as such, independent of the marketing techniques, is evidenced by the ability of a small number of autonomous art lovers to consistently choose paintings which embodied 124 Conclusion this spirit. The Faure family serves as only one example of such patron logic. Much like Durand-Ruel, if without commercial motive, the Faures bought, in succession, from the School of 1830 and from the Impressionists, prior to the escalation of either in value. This suggests an underlying structure of reason, a capacity on the part of a handful of art lovers, to evaluate the new aesthetic from 1830 on, according to some set of standards exogenous to the French Academy. Hence, Durand-Ruel and the other dealers of modern art, while playing a critical role in establishing a basis for aesthetic judgments, really functioned to match the new taste publics with material artifacts congenial to their standards. That the arrest and trial of Dreyfus triggered a decade of political conflict between proponents of the traditional and modernist perspectives was more than coincidental. For the particulars of the case concretized otherwise inchoate sentiments rampant throughout the population, but especially those pertaining to the Republican efforts in secularization. That Dreyfus was a Jew, that his crime was treason, focused the contradiction implicit in a republican state that granted official status to Catholicism. Moreover, the Dreyfusist challenge to the authority of the Army brought to public consciousness the all too precarious situation of the individual in a prestigious, bureaucratic hierarchy. But the intense anti-Semitic response of the anti-Dreyfusards was an indicator of already prevalent insecurities and fears brought on by the disruption to tradition by the forces of modernization. Jew-baiting had begun in France in the early 1880’s, threatening Jewish existence enough to provoke a meeting between Zodac Kahn, the Grand Rabbi, and Edmond Rothschild in 1882 regarding the development of a colony in Palestine which might serve as a refuge for Jews displaced from their native lands. Edmond’s project was thus twelve years in the offing at the time Dreyfus was arrested, although, prior to that time, these efforts were largely directed toward the relief of suffering for Russian Jews. But the presence of Theodore Herzl in the crowd that shouted, “À mort! À mort les Juifs!” at the degradation of Dreyfus, gave impetus to the Zionist movement by providing it with an ideological spokesman: …Theodore Herzl was among the throng. That such a thing could happen in France was a traumatic experience for him. ‘Where was heard the cry against the Jews?’ he asked in anguish…‘in republican, modern, civilized France, a hundred years after the Declaration of the Rights of Man’. The shock crystallized half-formed ideas in Herzl’s head; he went home and wrote Der Judenstaat, the first sentence of which established its aim: ‘restoration of the Jewish state’ (Cowles 1973: 186). Conclusion 125 For most Jews in France, including Edmond Rothschild, Zionism was too extreme. And the official response of the Consistoire was too tame (Marrus 1971). Most French Jews responded to the events of the Affair by an affirmation of their faith in the Third Republic and their love for their native France, but from an unquestionably Dreyfusard stance. There was little choice but to participate in the movement which appealed to the ideals of 1789 – liberty, equality, and fraternity – and, implicitly, to insist that France herself change to accommodate the Jewish perspective by severing her ties to the Catholic Church. Life became increasingly uncomfortable for Jewish antirevisionists. Both Meyer and Pollainnais converted to Catholicism…Their strategy had been to protect their own and to some extent Jewish interests by identification with the most explicit defenders of order in French society…Conversion, in fact, underlined the failure of their approach. Condemned by Jews, the frequent target of attacks by Clémenceau in L’Aurore, and never fully accepted by antiSemites, Jewish anti-Dreyfusards found it difficult to reply to the inevitable charges of lâcheté (Marrus 1971: 230-231). Even the most sympathetic reader must ask whether the Impressionist style did, in fact, function as an emblem for the aristocratie républicaine, or if the data presented in Chapter 4 simply reveal the upward mobility of Jews in France during the economically fortuitous decade which preceded the war. Without interviewing the actual patrons, now impossible, it cannot be ascertained beyond doubt that Impressionism was the emblem of secular, republican partisanship. However, if the increasing preponderance of Jews among the patrons of the paintings during the unfolding of the Affair was simply the consequence of upward mobility, a similar pattern should be found among the patrons of Salon art. Regarding the sales of works by Ingres and his student Flandrin between 1841 and 1899, only 3% were purchased by Jews. Not surprisingly, the Jewish patrons represented by the 3% were the Pereire brothers, who purchased two paintings by Ingres in 1872. The Pereire brothers were the noted Saint Simoneon financiers, who converted to Christianity as they assimilated into the economic elite of France under Napoleon III. Furthermore, those Jewish families most solidly established in France – the Camondos and the Rothschilds – and already noted for their tasteful purchases in the arts, both figure among the patrons of Impressionism. For either family, it would be difficult to attribute their taste for the newer style to status insecurity stemming from recent upward mobility or to lack of cultivation in European art: both the Rothschilds and the 126 Conclusion Camondos in 1895 had a history of patronage in the arts, with magnificent collections of the old masters. But their purchases of the modern style may have served to confirm the aesthetic preferences of less solidly established Jews. The link between the events of the Affair and the predominantly Jewish patronage of Impressionist art is also supported by the absence of a parallel pattern for the United States market (Durand-Ruel, livres des comptes, New York). It is true that the Guggenheims purchased two Impressionist paintings from Durand-Ruel in this period, but, with this exception, the American market was comprised of Gentile families of fortune. This suggests that it was not religion per se which was responsible for the affinity between French Jews and Impressionist art, but, rather, their structural position and its negotiation during the Affair. Finally, that the Affair was the significant if indirect causal factor that explains the pattern of patronage is confirmed by the effects of the eventual Dreyfusard victory in 1899 on the participation of Jews in the arts. For in the generation which came of age after the turn of the century can be found, for the first time in French history, at least two Jewish artists of major rank – Chagall and Modigliani. Chagall, no doubt as an indirect consequence of the outcome of the Affair, painted specifically Jewish themes, revealing not just tolerance, but idealization in the art world of non-Christian points of view. It is not surprising that enterprising Ambroise Vollard, in recognition of the new means of absorbing Jews at the center of French culture, thus an expanding market, commissioned Chagall to illustrate a limited edition of the Old Testament. In conclusion, the Impressionist paintings, as signal modern works irrespective of the political dispositions of the artists, must be viewed as emblematic of the ideals of the secular, democratic Republicans of France, who came into conflict with the traditional forces in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The final acceptance of the style as high art parallels the final acceptance of their Jewish patrons, on a different set of terms, as a consequence of the Dreyfusard Revolution. And this affinity illustrates the necessary impact of the accommodation of a minority group into the center of a culture. For if such a group brings no new ideas, no new artifacts with it, if the culture does not change as a consequence of the absorption, then the assimilative processes must be evaluated as totalitarian – as requiring a renouncement of the minority perspective – rather than as pluralistic and accommodating. It would be naïve to suggest that anti-Semitism in France ended with the termination of the Affair. But what is critical to our understanding of the impact which French Jews had on the culture of their native land, Conclusion 127 given their accommodation, is that anti-Semitic sentiments, as a consequence of the Affair, no longer found support in a political and legal structure which, after Combes, had severed all ties between Catholicism and the State. Religion, henceforth, was regarded as a private affair. And this move toward a secular ideal was foreshadowed in the arts. Impressionism as art – as a facet of spiritual life – provided the Dreyfusards with a vision; but its meaning, its interpretation and its acceptance were the consequences of their political and economic actions. NOTES 1. “Institut” is used throughout the text to denote the nineteenth century term for Academy, since, as distinct from the initial Academy, it was autonomous from the École, in theory. The name of the organization was changed to the original “Academie” by a royal decree in 1816. 2. Painters: Aligny, Allonge, Andréescu, Babcock, Barye, Bazille, Belly, Bertin, Bodmer, Bonheur, Boulanger, Brascassat, Bréton, Bulgari, Cabat, Calame, Camp, Cézanne, Chabry, Chaigneau, Chintreuil, Chitussi, Ciceri, Cock, C., Cock, X., Comairas, Coosemans, Corot, Costa, Courbet, Dagnan, Daubigny, C., Daubigny, K., Daumier, Decamps, Defaux, Delpy, Désgoffe, De Tivoli, Diaz, Djuvara, Dupré, J., Dupre, V., Dutilleux, Eaton, Enfantin, Flers, Francais, Gassies, Grigorescu, Harpignies, Hervier, Hill, Huet, Hunt, Inness, Jacque, Jadin, Jettel, Knyff, Dutenbrouwer, Lavielle, Le Coeur, Le Roux, Lieberman, Marcke de Lummen, Martin, Menn, Millet, Mirea, Monet, Monticelli, Munkacsy, Nazon, Oudinot, Paal, Papeleu, Penne, Renoir, Richet, Rousseau, Saal, Seurat, Sisley, Sutter, Troyon, Watelin, Ziem (Bouret 1972). 3. Rosen and Zerner may overstate this case. The meaning of “real technical virtuosity” is unclear, and, regardless of its referent, that it was absent in the works of Ingres would be difficult to defend. Personal preference may dictate taste, but Ingres’s gifts in drawing are obvious. 4. Luce is placed with the divisionists because of his social affiliations. Artistically, he is best identified as a Symbolist. APPENDIX PAINTERS AND SELECTED PAINTINGS: DATES AND STYLES NEO-CLASSICAL David, Jacques-Louis (1748-1825) 1. The Horatii 2. Madame Récamier 3. The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Coronation of the Empress Josephine Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique (1780-1867) 4. The Turkish Bath 5. Paola et Francesca 6. La Vierge a l’hostie Flandrin, Hippolyte-Jean (1809-1864) 7. Jeune fille Jamin, Paul-Joseph (1853-1903) 8. Le Brenn et sa part de butin Cabanel, Alexandre (1824-1888) 9. Phedre Bouguereau, William-Adolphe (1825-1905) 10. Vierge consolatrice ENGLISH LANDSCAPE Turner, Joseph Mallard William (1775-1851) 11. Interior at Petworth 12. Rain, Steam, and Speed Constable, John (1776-1837) 13. Sky and Trees BARBIZON Corot, Jean-Baptiste (1796-1875) 14. The Bridge at Narni Millet, Jean-Francois (1814-1875) 15. The Gleaners REALISM Courbet, Gustave (1819-1877) 16. Les Demoiselles des bords de la Seine 130 Appendix ROMANTICISM Gericault, Theodore (1791-1824) 17. The Raft of the Meduse Delacroix, Eugene (1798-1863) 18. Women of Algiers 19. Still-Life with Lobster 20. The Sea from the Heights of Dieppe PRE-IMPRESSIONIST Boudin, Eugene (1824-1898) 21. Bathers on the Beach at Trouville 22. Twilight over the Basin of Le Havre Gleyre, Marc-Gabriel-Charles (1806-1874) 23. Les illusions perdues DUTCH LANDSCAPE Jongkind, Johann Barthold (1819-1891) 24. Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris IMPRESSIONISTS Manet, Edouard (1832-1883) 25. Lola de Valence 26. Olympia 27. Le déjeuner sur l’herbe 28. Argenteuil Monet, Claude (1840-1926) 29. Impression, Sunrise 30. The Basin at Argenteuil 31. Rue Montorgueil Decked with Flags 32. Waterlily Pool Renoir, Pierre-Auguste (1841-1919) 33. La Loge 34. Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette 35. La Fin du Déjeuner 36. La Toilette Degas, Edgar (1834-1917) 37. Women with Chrysanthémums 38. Women on the Terrace of a Café 39. L’Etoile Sisley, Alfred (1839-1899) 40. Louveciennes, Heights of Marly 41. Boat Races at Molesey Pissarro, Camille (1830-1903) Appendix 42. Orchard with Flowering Fruit 43. Ile Lacroix, Rouen—Effect of Fog 44. Place du Theatre Francais, Paris 45. Fenaison a Eragny Cézanne, Paul (1839-1906) 46. A Modern Olympia 47. The Bridge at Maincy 48. Village of Gardanne 49. Boy in a Red Vest Bazille, Frederic (1841-1870) 50. Scéne d’Ete POST-IMPRESSIONISTS—SYMBOLISTS Redon, Odilon (1840-1916) 51. Wild Flowers in a Long-Necked Vase Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903) 52. The Beach at Dieppe 53. The Moon and the Earth Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-1890) 54. Fourteenth of July in Paris 55. The Starry Night POST-IMPRESSIONISTS—DIVISIONISTS Seurat, Georges (1859-1891) 56. The Watering Can 57. Bathing at Asniéres 58. The Canoe Luce, Maximilien (1858-1941) 59. View of the Seine Toward the Pont Neuf Signac, Paul (1863-1935) 60. Boulevard de Clichy in Paris 131 The History of the Salons of the Nineteenth Century Systems of Admissions and Prizes and Their 1667 First Salon. Exhibition limited to the works by academicians and professors at the Royal Academy. No selection and no jury for admitting works. This was an irregular Salon. 1746 Establishment of an examining committee to refuse scandalous works on moral, religious, or political grounds. 1791 All artists, both members and non-members, are permitted to exhibit their works, without examination. 1793 Suppression of the Academy, and, eventually, the beginning of the system of prizes. Salons annuels. 1795 Creation of the Institut. 1798 Creation of a jury to examine works submitted. Fifteen jury members, named by the government. 1802 Salons bisannuels. 1803 Examining jury (also for censorship) of six members. Organization of the Fourth Class of the Institut, regrouping of the Fine Arts Section, placement of the instruction at the École des Beaux Arts, as well as the Prix de Rome competition, under the jurisdiction of the Fourth Class. The members of the Academy and the prior winners of awards are permitted to exhibit without examination. 1830 The entire Fourth Class of the Institut becomes the jury, and takes the name Académie des Beaux Arts. 1831 Salons annuels (except in 1832, the year of the cholera epidemic). 1848 Suppression of the jury. Admission open to all artists, without examination. 1849 Re-establishment of the jury, which is elected by all exhibiting artists. Appendix 133 1852 Jury is half appointed, half elected, by previous exhibiting artists. The members of the Academy and the artists who have won medals at previous Salons are exempt from examination. Salons bisannuels. 1857 The Académie des Beaux Arts again becomes the sole judge. 1863 Reform of the Academy of Fine Arts, from which the organization of the competition for the Prix de Rome is withdrawn. Suppression of medals of different classes. Replacement by a unique medal. Beginning of the system of “hors concours”. Three-fourths of the jury is elected by artists who have won prizes at previous Salons; these artists are exempted from further examination. Definitive establishment of the Salons annuels (except for the years 1871 and 1915-1919). 1869 Two-thirds of the jury is elected. 1870 Jury is entirely elected by past exhibitors. The organization of the competition for the Prix de Rome is returned to the Académie des Beaux Arts. Restoration of the system of medals of different classes. 1872 Jury is elected by singular medallists or Prix de Rome winners. Suppression of exemptions. 1874 Jury is partly appointed and partly elected by members of the Academy, past medal winners, and Prix de Rome winners. Creation of the Prix du Salon. First exhibition of the Impressionists. 1880 The responsibility for, and the organization of the Salons passes from the administration to the Sociéte Nationale des Artistes Francais, formed from past exhibitors. The jury is elected by the members themselves, who have taken for their head, the members of the Institut. 1884 First Salon des Indépendantes (society founded with the aid of the city of Paris, without medals or prizes). 134 Appendix 1890 Scission within the Société des Artistes Francais, which continues to exhibit at the Grand-Palais, on the Champs Elysées. Creation of the national society of fine arts (called la Nationale), whose members exhibit at the Champ-de-Mars, and refuse a system of awards. 1903 First Salon d’Automne, without medals or awards. _________________________ Source: Lepine, Olivier, Equivoques. Paris: Musée des Arts Decoratifs, pp. 19-20. Translated by B.R. Walters. PATRONS OF SALON ART Public Sales, Ingres: 1841 Comte Perrégaux 1842 Mainemare 1852 Duchesse d’Orleans 1857 Marcille 1863 Demidoff 1865 Comte de Pourtalés 1867 Marquis de P… Aquarelles: 1868 1869 1883 1869 1870 1872 1872 1873 1875 1877 1878 1881 1881 1882 1883 1885 1886 1888 1888 1889 1889 1892 1892 1894 1897 1897 1898 1898 1900 1900 1887 Khalil-Bey Breithmeyer de Beurnonville Boruet-Aubertot Rivet Periére Carlin Théophile Gautier Marcotte de Quiniéres Baron J. de H… Parvey Edwards Lepel-Cointet B… Lehmann Comte de la Béraudiére Baron de Riquetti Marquis d’Houdan X… Secrétan Coutan-Gauguet Baron Mourre Haro H. Garnier du Plessis-Belliére Haro Francais Madame de Bondy de Heredia X… Goupil 136 Dessins: 1861 1861 1863 1865 1868 1872 1872 1876 1878 1880 1882 1883 1883 1883 1884 1885 1888 1889 1892 1892 1893 1894 1894 1895 1895 1895 1896 1896 1897 1897 1898 1898 1899 Appendix de la Fontaine X… X… Desperet Breithmeyer Pereire Carlin Marcille Paravey Maherault Gigoux Marmontel C. Blanc Lehmann M… de Beurnonville Goupil Coutan-Hauguet Bourdillon Haro Destailleur H. Garnier X… Galichon X… X… Furby Destailleur Piat Haro, pere Tabourier D… (London) Comte Doria Public Sales, Flandrin 1863 San Donato 1868 Marontel 1868 de Lambertye 1878 Paravay 1868 Comte de Lambertye 1883 Marmontel Appendix 1897 1873 137 Haro Gigoux ________________________ Source: Mireur, H., Dictionnaire des Ventes d’Art. Paris: Maison d’Editions d’Ouvres Artistiques, 1911: 6-13, 171-172. 138 Appendix BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, V. 2003. Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. 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Dagnon, Imprimerie. propiete de M.J.B. Faure. (private collection of M. Charles Durand-Ruel). 143 147 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barbara R. Walters is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Kingsborough Community College, The City University of New York. She earned a BA from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, an MA in Sociology, an MA in Musicology, and a PhD in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her published articles have appeared in Sociological Symposium, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Religion, Art and Text, and Art Review. She is currently completing a second book, The Feast of Corpus Christi, with Vincent Corrigan and Peter T. Ricketts. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. 146 INDEX Alexander, V., xiv Anarchy, 25, 27 Anti-Dreyfusards, 44 Anti-Semitic, 45, 111, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122, 130, 133 Arendt, H., 115, 145 Art critics, 15 Atelier, 5, 6, 9, 18 Barbizon, 11 Batignolles, 1, 18, 25, 36, 43, 127 Becker, H., 37 Bernheim, 28, 39, 40, 46, 51, 105 Boime, A., 5, 9, 10, 11, 16, 43, 44, 45, 145, 146 Bourdieu, P., 45, 145 Burke, P., 38 Café Guérbois, 1, 18, 128 Camondo, 105 Capitalism, 43, 120, 129 Catholicism, 128, 130, 131, 133 Chapman, G.,112, 113, 114, 116,118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124,145 Coser, L., xv, 39, 40, 106 Data, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 131 Dealer-critic system, 42 Delacroix, 12, 13, 38, 136, 146 Dreyfus, 44, 45, 51, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 145, 146, 147 Dreyfus Affair, 44, 45, 114, 121,122, 124, 125, 126, 146 Drumont, 45, 110, 111, 116, 117,119, 121, 122 Durand-Ruel, 2, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 51, 105, 130, 132, 146, 148, 149 École des Beaux Arts, 4, 5, 6, 14, 138 Elective affinity, 51, 126 Fini, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 21, 129 Francastel, P., 19, 20, 21, 145, 146 French Academy, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 128, 130 Gallery, 12, 35, 38, 39, 40, 46, 48 Impressionists, 2, 10, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28 30, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 129, 130, 139, 147 Ingres, 8, 12, 13, 15, 51, 132, 134, 135, 141, 146 Intellectuals, 44, 45, 113, 123, 124 J’Accuse, 116, 122 Jewish community, 120, 124, 125 Jews, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 126, 130, 131, 132, 133, 146, 147 La Libre Parole, 45, 110, 111, 116, 120, 121 Landes, D., 118, 146 Marrus, M., 115, 116, 120, 121, 123,124, 125, 131, 146 Neo-Impressionists, 24, 25 Nochlin, L., 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 145, 147 Patrons, 2, 25, 34, 35, 39, 42, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51, 132, 133 146 Index Pevsner, N. 3, 4, 7, 8, 147 Picquart, 112, 116 Prix de Rome, 5, 6, 10, 14, 138, 139 Protestants, 43 Rewald, J., 2, 27, 28, 37, 38 147 Salon, 1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 34, 36, 37, 108, 132, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145 Salon des Refusés, 11, 14, 37 Symbolist, 27, 28, 29, 30, 134 Third Republic, 22, 44, 110, 114, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129, 131, 145 Tilly, C., 39 Transactions, 46, 47, 49, 50 Veblen, T., 38 Venturi, L., 21, 30, 40, 146, 148 Waldeck-Rousseau, 50, 112, 122, 123 Weber, M., 43, 44, 126, 146, 148 White and White, 5, 6, 7, 16, 39 Zola, Emile, 26, 116